| In
Harmony |
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| When
Yu-Beng Met Kheng Hua |
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He
is popularly known on television for his role as a police sergeant
in Triple Nine and she as the wife of Chu Beng in Phua Chu Kang. More
recently, they starred together in a locally produced television movie
The New Home, which was shown on TCS 5.
On stage, his credentials include Boeing Boeing and Bent (for which
he won Best Supporting Actor in the 2004 Life! Theatre Awards), just
to name a few. Together, they have starred in Luna-id's staging of
Harold Pinter's The Lover and The Dumb Waiter, and in Wild Rice's
2002 production of George Orwell's Animal Farm. So the list goes on
for Lim Yu-Beng and Tan Kheng Hua, one of Singapore's celebrity couples!
They met in 1989 when Yu-Beng was working on a show where Tangs was
sponsoring the clothes. He went down to the department store to pick
out the clothes and was met by an assistant manager who immediately
caught his eye. Her name was Tan Kheng Hua. |
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| Perhaps
Singapore's most active couple in the acting industry,
Lim Yu-Beng and Tan Kheng Hua chat about romance, acting
and growing up in Central Singapore District. |
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Their
paths crossed again when Kheng Hua signed up for an acting course
and, lo and behold, her teacher was Yu-Beng!
"We fought all the time during the course!" she recalls.
However, the classroom pyrotechnics soon translated into a different
kind of fireworks and a few months later, they found themselves
together as a couple. They married three years after that.
Yu-Beng and Kheng Hua both grew up in the Central Singapore
District. Yu-Beng fondly recalls tucking into Knockerbocker
Banana Skyscraper ice cream from the Magnolia Milk Bar at the
old Cold Storage (now Centrepoint Shopping Centre), beef kway
teow from Koek Road and mee goreng from Waterloo Street. He
also remembers the YMCA on Stevens Road where he learned judo.
Kheng Hua's childhood memories include buying Seventeen magazine
at a newsagent above Fitzpatrick's supermarket (now the new
extension to Paragon Shopping Centre), ordering |
pork chops at Mont d'Or café (where Ngee Ann City now
is) and watching movies at Lido cinema.
On why they chose to be actors, Kheng Hua's answer is simple,
"I love it!" She elaborates, "My love for acting
has taken different shades; it has changed, developed, morphed.
I guess as with all loves, this one is dynamic, organic; it
changes as I change."
As for Yu-Beng, "It's all I've wanted since I was 16. I
did a school musical at 15 and I was hooked! For once, I felt
that I was doing something worthwhile, that mattered, that communicated
to people, and that I was good at. I then enrolled in an American
university as there was no training at all here and began my
undergraduate training at 17."
When asked if the decision to make acting a career was a tough
one, Yu-Beng explains that he knew he wasn't going the way his
many classmates were going. His dad had said to him that education
is to teach one how to learn. Once one has got that, one can
do anything. So studying acting, and |
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then
giving it a shot as a career, did not mean closing the doors
to other careers if he decided to do something else later on
since learning to learn was a lifelong skill applicable to anything
life dished out, in the theatre or elsewhere.
It was not a tough decision for Kheng Hua because "decisions
are not tough when you are certain in your heart. No matter
what the opportunity costs seem to those outside". She
continues, "I gave up a good pay packet and a 'respectable'
career path, but I was certain I wanted to make the change so
it was not a difficult decision."
Fame has not changed the couple. Both are accomplished actors,
successful and famous. Yet |
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they
remain modest, down to earth and have their feet firmly planted
on the ground.
Kheng Hua says, "I went to the neighbourhood wet market
and hawker centre in the morning with ugly shorts, bad hair
and no make-up before I appeared on TV, and I will jolly well
go to the neighbourhood wet market and hawker centre in the
morning with ugly shorts, bad hair and no make-up AFTER I appeared
on TV!"
Yu-Beng adds, "We made an agreement when we both started
getting recognised, that if either of us ever started acting
like some brat from Hollywood, the other would slap 'em. I still
eat at hawker centres, wear the same clothes and come |
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home
sweaty from work. And I probably always will!"
Does the couple have any advice for young, aspiring actors?
"Don't just aspire. Do! And keep doing! Work hard and don't
give up so easily." |
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