Going For Gold

Meet Henry Golding, the Singaporebased British-Malaysian actor who bagged his first three international silver-screen roles in one year.

- Caroline Suganda

The “Crazy Rich Asians” movie, which opens on 17 August has a thing or two for Singaporeans to be excited about. For starters, it is based on a novel of the same title, written by Singaporean-American novelist Kevin Kwan, who was inspired by his childhood in the inner circle of Singapore’s who’s who; the Hollywood production boasts an all-Asian cast and it was shot at iconic locations around Singapore; and finally, our own local heartthrob, Henry Golding, who plays the “super-rich Singaporean boyfriend” aka the main dude in the show. For the uninitiated, Golding is a British-Malaysian actor who has called Singapore home for the past five years. You may have caught the 31-year-old as that adventurous, up-for-anything travel host for Discovery Channel Asia and BBC World News. Before that, Golding was a hairstylist who had moved from London to Asia to follow his dreams of working in television. “I had no idea about television. I just made that leap, went into it gung-ho. Pretty naïve maybe, but I worked hard and I got it,” says Golding during a private interview in San Francisco.

Golding has been travelling for the past few months and we managed to catch him in San Francisco where he was a participant in Cartier’s Social Lab, where the French watchmaker hosts a series of inspiring conversations for pioneering and fearless trendsetters who epitomise the spirit of its newly reissued watch, the Santos.