In 2002, local veteran actress Chen Huihui took home the Best Supporting Actress honours at Star Awards for the Channel 8 drama The Wing of Desire — it was her sixth nomination in the category but her first win.

The award boosted her confidence and brought her joy for a year, she said in a recent interview with Lianhe Zaobao.

However, when Mediacorp wanted to renew her acting contract a year later, she was shocked at the terms offered to her.

"Many people thought that winning the award would be a turning point in my life. Actually, that was what I thought, too, which was why I said I was happy for a year. Yet, one year later when the contract was to be renewed, the company talked to me but the discussion left me flabbergasted," Huihui told the Chinese daily.

"It turned out that the biggest change from winning the award was having my salary reverted to what I got three years ago. I found that strange. Shouldn't a person's salary increase with time?"

Huihui, who got into acting after joining a performance class in 1986, thought for a long time about whether she should remain with the company and she eventually chose to leave.

"There are some things that are hard to explain regarding my decision to leave. It was not just about my salary that made me give up my acting ambition, it was also due to other matters and the accumulation of past issues," Huihui explained without going into details.

Media veteran Man Shu Sum later invited her to join SPH MediaWorks' Channel U and she agreed.

Mediacorp and MediaWorks subsequently merged in 2004.

The difference between actors then and now

Huihui disappeared from the screens for over a decade after becoming a mum, but she returned for supporting roles in the 2015 Channel 8 drama You Can Be An Angel Too and also The Truth Seekers in the following year.

In the interview, she also said the acting experience is different now.

She explained: "In recent years when I returned to acting, I've often felt that there are some new actors who are very energetic when you work with them, and this is something worth learning from.

"I also noticed, there are times when certain plots or lines are very important, but some new actors would instead say, 'This line doesn't fit my identity', or 'This line isn't suitable for me to say now'. If they don't say their lines, the actors around them won't know what [lines] to say. Back in our times, we were more conservative. We will read whatever's in the script.

"If we find a scene difficult to perform, we would think of an alternate way to act it out. In other words, no matter what, you have to read the lines out. I guess this is the difference between two generations of actors."

kwokkarpeng@asiaone.com

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