Labour of Love

Veteran actress & executive producer Irene Ang goes retro and sentimental in My Love Sinema - that was five long years in the making.

- Jonathan Sung

Some of us may remember Irene Ang as the ‘Big White Shark’ or ‘Jaws’, the nasty teenage female rival swimmer of Madeline Chu and Chen Liping in the 1989 Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) drama Splash to Victory. Most of us, though, would probably be better acquainted with her as Rosie Phua, the brazen loud-mouthed and often garishly dressed – complete with leopard prints – wife of our most famous curly-haired, yellow-boot-wearing contractor in Singapore, JB and some say Batam, in our longest running sitcom Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd (and subsequently Phua Chu Kang Sdn Bhd) – the role that nabbed her Best Comedy Performance by an Actress at the Asian Television Awards back in 2002.

Whether be it dropping jaws with her impressive weight-loss transformation, rib-tickling and entertaining everyone with her comical antics, giving back to society by championing various social causes and proving her mettle in the entrepreneurial world of business, the multi-faceted CEO of Singapore’s first and largest Artiste Management Agency, FLY Entertainment Pte Ltd, Irene has accomplished all that and more.

And now, as executive producer of My Love Sinema (that was five long years in the making), she sets her sights on yet another milestone – to shatter the stereotype and prove that a local nostalgic romance film can be just as good, if not even better than, its comedic counterparts at capturing the hearts of movie-goers, both local and otherwise.

Tell us about this movie in four words.

IRENE: Love. Patience. Passion. Film.

My Love Sinema took a really long time to come to fruition. Given that the film is not a SFX-laden production, why the long production period?