Coco Lee, a Chinese language American singer and songwriter finest identified for performing an Oscar-nominated music within the movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” died on Wednesday. She was 48.

The trigger was suicide, in line with a press release from her sisters, Carol and Nancy Lee, who didn’t say the place she died. Ms. Lee was taken to a hospital on Sunday after she tried suicide at her house, they stated.

“Coco had been affected by despair for a couple of years however her situation deteriorated drastically over the previous couple of months,” her sisters wrote. “Though Coco sought skilled assist and did her finest to struggle despair, sadly that demon inside her took the higher of her.”

Ms. Lee had constructed a profitable profession as a pop singer in Asia, however she was finest identified to American audiences for singing the music “A Love Earlier than Time” within the 2000 movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.” The music was nominated for an Oscar in the most effective new unique music class, and she or he carried out it in entrance of a tv viewers of hundreds of thousands on the Academy Awards ceremony in March 2001.

“Combining the flavour and texture of Japanese music with the orchestral shade and delicate lyrics of Western tradition, the magic of this stunningly stunning movie is really realized on this evocative love ballad,” the actress Julia Stiles stated as she launched Ms. Lee’s efficiency.

Her profession as a recording artist started after she completed because the runner-up in a singing competitors hosted by the tv broadcaster TVB in Hong Kong in 1993, shortly after she graduated from highschool. Ms. Lee entered the competitors on a whim, she advised The San Francisco Chronicle in 2000, and stumbled upon success.

“I used to be timid as a child,” she stated. “I might conceal within the rest room and sing within the bathe. I at all times predicted my older sister Nancy can be the singer. She’s stunning, gifted and she or he’s obtained good legs. I had no thought it will be me.”

However being chosen as runner-up within the TVB contest led to the discharge of her debut album with a Taiwanese file label in 1994. “My objective within the singing enterprise is to not keep in a single place,” she advised a reporter for The South China Morning Put up in 1997, saying that she needed to work in Asia and the U.S.

In 1999, Ms. Lee launched her first full English language album, “Simply No Different Approach,” which featured pop and R&B songs. One observe, “Earlier than I Fall In Love,” was included on the soundtrack for the Julia Roberts movie “Runaway Bride.”

Ms. Lee’s profession additionally expanded past music. She voiced the lead character within the Mandarin model of Disney’s 1998 animated movie “Mulan,” along with singing the film’s theme music, “Reflection.”

Ms. Lee, who was born on Jan. 17, 1975, in Hong Kong, moved to the US and attended center and highschool in San Francisco, the place she was topped Miss Teen Chinatown in 1991. She briefly attended the College of California at Irvine, intending to review biology and turn out to be a physician, however dropped out after her freshman yr, she advised The Chronicle.

Of their assertion, Ms. Lee’s sisters famous that this yr marked the thirtieth anniversary of the launch of her achieved singing profession. Ms. Lee was “identified to have labored tirelessly to open up a brand new world for Chinese language singers within the worldwide music scene,” they wrote, highlighting her “wonderful reside performances.”

Along with her sisters, Ms. Lee’s survivors embody her husband, Bruce Rockowitz, and two stepdaughters. A whole record was not instantly obtainable.

Her final single, known as “Tragic,” was launched in February. In a publish to her social media on the finish of 2022, Ms. Lee acknowledged having had an “extremely troublesome yr” however inspired her followers to unfold positivity and “be an influential determine to encourage folks.”

In case you are having ideas of suicide, name or textual content 988 to succeed in the 988 Suicide and Disaster Lifeline or go to SpeakingOfSuicide.com/assets.