By Han Wei Chou | Posted: 04 May 2010 1712 hrs
SINGAPORE: Actress Rui En was happy and smiling during a ceremony to mark the start of filming of upcoming Channel 8 drama “Unriddle”. The words ‘happy’ and ‘smiling’ are not often associated with the singer-actress, who is usually thought to be rather morose and sometimes described as a bit of an ‘ice queen’.
But she is indeed happy and appeared to be genuinely excited about her new role.
Having played a naive, happy-go-lucky girl in “Happy Family” and a mother in the upcoming “With You”, she will play a cool policewoman named Hu Xiao Man in “Unriddle”.
Her character is forced to work with an informant (screen veteran Chen Li Ping) who is her polar opposite in terms of upbringing and lifestyle, to solve various police cases.
“I think the chemistry will be very interesting, so [it’s] sort of like they completely don’t match [on paper] but somehow match,” gushed Rui En, who is working with Chen for the very first time.
This will also be the first time she is acting in three dramas consecutively. It may be exhausting but it did not dampen her enthusiasm one bit.
“I love this genre, I love the police, I love doing action and police shows. So I am very happy,” she said enthusiastically, before playing amateur psychiatrist.
“Maybe because I don’t have much of a childhood. This is sort of like playing cops and robbers, like it’s fulfilling my childhood [desires]… I think la.”
When I commented that most ladies would prefer playing house over playing cops and robbers when they were younger, Rui En was quick on the draw.
“I am not most ladies,” she chuckled.
Going Undercover
The other thing about “Unriddle” that puts a smile on her face is the chance to ‘go undercover’, as she will be wearing hair extensions again, like she did in “With You”.
“It’s very funny how its like people don’t recognise me [with the extensions], so when we go filming, even for the last show (“With You”), because I had clip on extensions, I can just go to the kopitiam (coffee shop) at the shopping centre and have my lunch.
“People don’t recognise [me], which I loooove. It’s like a disguise… They go, ‘Eh that girl looks a bit like, er but cannot be, the hair is not right’,” she said, laughing while her assistant attended to her flowing locks.
The only problem with the long hair is that it can become a sauna when the whether is hot, which is practically all the time in Singapore.
“It’s literally so hot, and it’s sweaty and everything. I have actually gotten quite used to it but… I am not sure if I will keep it because of the heat,” she said, as she swept back errant strands of hair for the third time in five minutes, before clarifying that she had not become girly or beauty conscious.
She simply had to tend to her hair extensions which were a lot of work.
“I am not that sort to sacrifice [comfort] for beauty”, said Rui En.
In fact, after experiencing how hard it was to manage hair extensions, the 29-year-old singer-actress said she had a newfound respect for girls who bend over backwards to make themselves beautiful.
“I completely admire the girls who actually do this, I mean they are not actresses or anything, but they do it (wear hair extensions) because they want to have long hair. There are a lot of things to take care [of],” she said, bowing her head slightly with hands clasped together, as though greeting an imaginary kung fu master.
“I like it, the way it looks, but now I understand like ‘paying the price for beauty’ you know,” she said, with a pained expression on her face.
“Unriddle” airs weekdays at 9pm from August 4.
Source: Channelnewsasia
Categorised in channelnewsasia.com, EN, Unriddle 最ç«ææ¡£.
