Then again, no one can say she hasn’t lived a full life.
The Yvonne then “was really fearless. Fearless and resilient,” Lim mused.
As an actress just starting out, “I got scoldings. I knew nothing then about acting. My highest record of takes was 58. But, I know the director was trying to help me, so I’m thankful to her for pushing me.”
In filming, there are “long hours and really hard times”, like shooting period dramas in multiple layers of clothing under the blazing sun. Recalling her time on the set of 1998’s Return Of The Condor Heroes, she said, “Even Christopher Lee as Yang Guo couldn’t take it. But, I was there, hanging on.”
She acknowledged: “I did get opportunities. I’m thankful for the roles that I had, thankful for people casting me in period dramas, and people realising I can actually do period dramas. That led to me venturing overseas.”
When she was posted to China to develop her acting career, her fanbase there began to grow.
Her makeup artist recalls travelling with her to a village outside of Beijing for a commercial shoot, where there were no lavatories. Lim suggested knocking on villagers’ doors to ask if they could use their bathrooms. The team was skeptical. But, when she appeared on people’s doorsteps, she was instantly recognised and welcomed into homes.
Even recently, shooting in a kopitiam in Singapore, tourists from China approached her to ask for a photo, she told us.
But, it hasn’t been successes and smooth sailing all the way.
Before she worked in China, there was a period in time when the good roles dried up and she found herself cast in fewer dramas. And, after winning her first Top 10 Most Popular Female Artistes trophy in 1998, she subsequently didn’t make the Top 10, all the way up until 2009. She started wondering what had gone wrong. “That was when I seriously considered that maybe my time was up, and I should try something else,” she recalled.
But, while in China for “a good half a year of not going home, living alone, moving from one drama to another”, “the light bulb went on. I started to understand the art of storytelling.”
And, when she returned to Singapore, “that was when I started getting acting awards”, like Best Supporting Actress for her work in Portrait Of Home in 2005 and Best Actress for Metamorphosis in 2007.
International endorsements and magazine covers stacked up.
“And that’s when I met my husband,” she smiled. Alex Tien was then a member of the boyband BAD and the two were introduced when the band was invited to perform at a charity show in Singapore. “He was interested in me. But, I was not into good-looking boys,” she said. “I knew it was tough being in the limelight and I didn’t want to be with another person who was also in the limelight.”
Was it because she dated someone in showbiz before? “Sort of, but it didn’t work out,” she said.
After 10 years of staying in touch as friends, “He was no longer in the boyband, and he was a normal person. Before, he was young, good looking, and all the female fans were always chasing him wherever he was. He had bleached hair. I was like, ‘Ugh. Not for me.’” But, since he had now “put on weight and had a tummy, I said, ‘Okay. This is good! Maybe we can give it a shot’.”
