Turning 60 during SG60: Arts and entertainment personalities on looking back and ahead
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SINGAPORE – What do they miss most about the Singapore of their childhood? What have been their proudest contributions? And what do the nation’s future and their next era look like? The Straits Times catches up with nine home-grown arts and entertainment personalities who hit 60 in SG60.
Married actors Chen Liping and Rayson Tan: ‘Not the end of our careers, but a new beginning’
Singaporean actors Rayson Tan and Chen Liping are the rare celebrity couple who were born in 1965, on Jan 12 and Aug 22 respectively, the same year as an independent Singapore.
Chen began acting in 1985 after completing a drama training course with the then Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (now Mediacorp), and is most famous for her role as a bubbly teacher in the drama series Good Morning, Sir! (1989).
She also has three Best Actress Star Awards, for her roles in Holland V (2003), Reunion Dinner (2009) and The Dream Makers (2013).
Tan kick-started his show-business career in 1990, after placing third in the Star Search acting competition. In 2014, he won Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the Asian Television Awards for the drama Entangled (2013), in which his character kidnaps and rapes his friend’s wife.
Director Eric Khoo: ‘I want to help the next wave of film-makers find their voice’
Film aficionados will agree that local director and screenwriter Eric Khoo single-handedly put modern Singapore cinema on the international map with his seminal drama Mee Pok Man (1995), followed by another classic, 12 Storeys (1997).
Both movies – the first about a noodle seller and his fascination with a disillusioned prostitute, and the latter a social commentary about a group of ordinary Singaporeans living in the same HDB block – blazed a trail, being screened at more than 60 film festivals worldwide.
Khoo did Singapore proud when 12 Storeys became the first made-in-Singapore film to officially participate in the Cannes Film Festival in 1997, thanks to its nomination in the Un Certain Regard section.
Entertainer Gurmit Singh: ‘My biggest contribution to S’pore is PCK – and three children’
He made yellow boots and permed hair famous, thanks to his titular Singlish-spouting Ah Beng contractor character in the hit local sitcom Phua Chu Kang (PCK) Pte Ltd (1997 to 2007).
Though the series ended almost 20 years ago after eight seasons, Gurmit Singh’s name is still so synonymous with PCK, he was tapped by the Government to reprise his TV persona for a Covid-19 campaign in 2020 to rap about good hygiene habits.
The home-grown actor-comedian is also a regular emcee of the National Day Parade and other National Day-related grassroot events. His latest hosting gig was for the Gardens by the Bay and Mediacorp National Day Concert on Aug 3, where he shared the stage with local personalities Nithiyia Rao, Yasminne Cheng and Zhin Sadali.
Ex-model Hanis Hussey: ‘I’ve grown to appreciate Singapore’s order and stability’
At 18, Hanis Hussey was the first Singaporean model to walk the runway of Paris Fashion Week when she closed the fall/winter show of French label Yves Saint Laurent in 1983.
The statuesque teen was even handpicked to be the muse of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and became the in-house model for his eponymous brand.
Hussey’s international career took off, and she strutted the catwalks of Paris, Milan and Tokyo, working with luxury fashion houses like Givenchy, Balmain, Christian Dior, Valentino and Versace.
Playwright Haresh Sharma: ‘I love that most Singaporeans will offer unsolicited advice’
In the more than 130 plays he has written so far, playwright Haresh Sharma has cast his astute eye over a staggering range of social issues, from mental illness and interracial relations to the pressures of the education system and queer ageing.
Born on Jan 18, 1965, the writer is a three-time winner for Best Original Script at The Straits Times Life Theatre Awards, and his play Off Centre (1993) was the first Singaporean play to be offered as a GCE O- and N-level literature text. He was conferred the Cultural Medallion in 2015.
Poet Boey Kim Cheng: ‘You learn to love what you have lost’
When it comes to chronicling urban change and memory in verse, poet Boey Kim Cheng is peerless in Singapore.
Even after emigrating from Singapore in 1997, Boey – who has made a home in Berowra, New South Wales, Australia – continues to write about the vexed knot of a vanishing Singapore. He was born on June 10, 1965.
His most recent collection, The Singer And Other Poems (2022), won the Kenneth Slessor Prize For Poetry at the New South Wales (NSW) Premier’s Literary Awards in 2023.
His books, Another Place (1992) and Clear Brightness (2012), have been texts for the GCE A-level literature syllabus.
Artist Yang Derong: ‘I want to disrupt gently and speak honestly’
The gregarious Yang Derong, who turns 60 on Sept 11, was not always an artist.
In the 1980s, he started out as a model before finding his groove as one of a bright young wave of Singaporean designers.
He left to work with French fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, then spearheaded visual branding at relaxed luxury retailer Esprit International.
But the creativity of the self-described “flaneur” could never be contained, and by the 2010s, Yang was designing theatre costumes for iconic productions such as Beauty World in 2015.
Artist Boo Sze Yang: ‘I don’t regret not having children’
A certain desolation is sometimes associated with semi-abstract painter Boo Sze Yang’s oeuvre. His most recognisable works are usually in greyscale, both segmented and melting.
Of these, his derelict interiors of empty cathedrals and shopping centres, as well as car and motorcycle crash wreckages, have been said to be indicative of a morbid impulse, with which the artist goes in search of a darker beauty.
A graduate of Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (Nafa) in 1991, Boo has taught at Nafa, National Institute of Education and School of the Arts.
His works are in collections including at National Gallery Singapore, the Istana and UOB Singapore, and he has held more than 18 solo exhibitions, in Singapore, Taiwan, Australia and the United States.
