DARK HORSE

In his next role and what is easily his most challenging character to date―actor Brian Ng wants one thing from you: your hatred.

- AARON KOK

On a blustery Wednesday morning, Brian Ng arrives at the studio in a pair of blue jeans and a light grey tee. He greets everyone with a smile, and if you didn't know better, you would've thought that he was just some regular guy on the street. Yet it's this innate, everyman appeal that has served Ng well as an actor.

Having entered showbiz at age 11, he recounts his first brush with the acting bug when he was cast for two seasons in the popular tweens television series, We Are R.E.M.

"It started from a drama school that my parents enrolled me in when I was a kid," Ng says. "My sister maintains that I was a terror as a child, so my parents thought that giving me an outlet to act was a great way to use up my energy, and it was through the school that my mother got to know about the show We Are R.E.M., which was holding auditions at that time. She signed me up for it, and that's how I kind of fell into acting." The stint then led to more roles, and he started to build up his acting chops on the side, even as he was completing his studies. Still, if you asked Ng whether being an actor was his childhood dream, he's quick to say no. "I enjoyed entertaining people, and making them laugh," he muses in conversation. "But when you're young, you're not thinking about turning this into a job. For me, it felt more like an extracurricular activity that gave me more pocket money, but I wasn't thinking about it as a long-term thing." Yet even though Ng could've walked away from the job of actor, something about the role of an actor drew him back to the front of the camera lens, to the point where he began pursuing it more seriously even as he completed his university studies.