My Perfect Weekend with actress Hong Huifang

Who: Veteran home-grown actress Hong Huifang, 64, whose Singapore auntie-in-Seoul role in local film Ajoomma (2022) earned her a

Golden Horse Awards nomination for Best Leading Actress.

She depicted

a grandmother in the Taiwanese drama Breeze By The Sea (2024),

and plays another grandmother in Chinese New Year movie Blooms Of Happiness, which is showing in Singapore cinemas. In the fantasy comedy, Hong’s character falls into a coma after being hit by a car on the night of the reunion dinner. Her son (Malaysian actor Ah Niu) then goes back in time hoping to prevent the accident.

Hong is married to actor-producer Zheng Geping, 60, and they have two children – actress Tay Ying, 28, and actor-singer Calvert Tay, 24.

“The ideal weekend is not about what I do, but whom I spend time with. And among my favourite people in the world are my father and husband.

My father turns 90 in 2025. When he was young, he used to help out at a coffee shop owned by my grandfather.

In the mid-2010s, when my mother fell ill, he started learning recipes through YouTube videos hoping to prepare food for her and cheer her up. He continued cooking after she died in 2015, and now his five children and eight grandchildren get to enjoy his creations.

Every weekend, my family will visit his flat in West Coast. His rendang mutton and Hokkien mee are so good. His seafood tofu is restaurant-standard – soft and savoury and always using fresh ingredients. He confines us to the living room until he is ready to unveil his “masterpiece”, and will ask for our feedback – is it too sweet, salty or spicy? I think this is his way of staying active.

Meanwhile, Geping and I love watching movies together, which is a common pastime for most people, but makes us workaholics in a way, since both of us work in entertainment. Our haunts are Shaw Theatres at Waterway Point or Jewel, especially for the late-night screenings, as there are fewer patrons then. This allows me to focus on the film, as I am easily distracted by the sound of chatter and popcorn-munching.

Geping loves action movies, and we would discuss them in the car on the ride home. He notices things like lighting mistakes and historical inaccuracies in the costumes, while I would dissect the script and characters. We approach it from different perspectives, but at the end of the day, we still love movies.

Even on holiday or work trips, we would try to carve out time to watch movies. When we were in Guangxi in China in December 2024, we caught the Chinese sports film Never Say Never (2023) and comedy One And Only (2023) on the same day. Through movies, we have seen and learnt so much of the world, and we never get tired of them.”