Given a choice between a badass Chinese action star and an aging French nun, which would you go for? That was the quandary French director Matthieu Kassovitz was faced with when casting Babylon A.D., his adaptation of the novel by Maurice Georges Dantec. In an interview with Michelle Yeoh, SciFi.com found out she wasn’t exactly the obvious choice for the character she plays in the film.

”[In the novel the character is a] 60-year-old, short, dumpy, French nun," Yeoh explained. "I look in the mirror and go, 'When did I become short and dumpy and French?' So you have to see the movie to see that I'm not."

Michelle, I don’t think we had to see the movie to know that. She plays a partner to a mercenary, played by Vin Diesel, who is charged with helping protect a genetically altered woman (Melanie Thierry) who may be pregnant with the next Messiah. Yeoh’s character is still a nun, but what’s important, she says, is how different she is from the lead actor. “[Kassovitz] thought, 'Who would protect a young girl like this? Who would be [the] opposite [of] a Vin Diesel, the big giant?”

August will be a Yeoh double feature, with The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor coming out August 1 and Babylon A.D. wrapping up the month on the 29th. In both movies you’ll probably be glad you’re not watching a dumpy French nun instead.