Jeanette Aw may speak with confidence and eloquence now, but things weren’t like this when she first started her acting career.
In a recent episode of CAPITAL 958 DJ Huang Shu Jun’s podcast A Cup Of Tea, the 44-year-old actress opened up about how she struggled with speaking Mandarin as a newbie.
For context, Jeanette’s road to stardom actually started after a friend sent her particulars to an entertainment agency who called her in for an interview.
Things were off to a bad start when she realised she had to converse entirely in Mandarin during the meeting.
“The person who called me was speaking Mandarin the whole time, so I asked if the interview had to be conducted in Mandarin as well because I was really shocked,” she recalled.
Jeanette, who studied English Literature, Drama and Psychology at the National University of Singapore, grew up in an English-speaking family.
Lucky for her, the language barrier wasn’t a dealbreaker for the agency. All they told her after the interview was to “read more Chinese comics to improve [her] command of the language.”
Jeanette eventually got her foot into showbiz but things didn’t get better. Especially when she was sent to Taiwan to act in a drama.
“Back then even having a casual conversation with [the Taiwanese] people felt like a challenge to me,” she said.
To make things worse, people also nitpicked on her high-pitched voice.
“At that time, I felt attacked and picked on,” said the actress, who also felt helpless. After all, a person is born with the voice they have.
“Many people don’t sound nice too, why weren’t they picked on then?” said Jeanette, who admitted that she was more defensive when she was younger.
It was only a few years later that she decided to seek professional help from an instructor who taught her how to control her voice.
“That also helped me perform better in dramas,” she said.
If you couldn’t tell, Jeanette is not someone who gets beaten down by criticism.
“I had to deal with hate comments at a very young age and that was a huge blow for me,” said the actress. “But I was able to recover very fast and focus on my new projects because I’m a very confident person. I would want to do better and prove myself,” she averred.
Catch Jeanette in Come Closer on mewatch or in the video below: