(From left) Taylor Swift, Michelle Yeoh and Pooja Nansi helped rock the lifestyle scene in 2023. PHOTOS: The Straits Times/ANN
SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/ANN): The Straits Times rounds up 10 players who rocked the lifestyle scene this year, from American pop star Taylor Swift to Malaysia's award winninga actress Michelle Yeoh and Singapore hotel heiress Carolyn Choo.
Actress Michelle Yeoh, who won Best Actress for Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022), has caught a second wind in her career.
Malaysia's Michelle Yeoh in her prime at 60
Michelle Yeoh entered 2023 with spicy sarcasm worthy of the steely matriarchs she has come to portray.
At the Golden Globes Awards ceremony held on Jan 10, she rebuked the racists she had met in her early days.
“Hollywood was a dream come true, until I got here,” she said in her Best Actress acceptance speech.
“Someone said, ‘You speak English.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, the flight over here was 13 hours long, so I learnt,’” said the actress, as she picked up the accolade for starring in the comedy Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Yeoh has been famous in Asia since the 1980s, when the Malaysian broke into the Hong Kong film industry to become one of its biggest action stars.
After a scene-stealing turn as a Chinese operative in the James Bond thriller Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), Hollywood came calling – but only when it needed her to be the stereotypical Asian sexpot. She shot down every offer, cooling off her career in the West.
Then came Taiwanese film-maker Lee Ang’s martial arts fantasy Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000). The Oscar-winning film was not just a box-office hit, but was also a cultural phenomenon.
Yeoh earned visibility in the West, but was still mostly called on to play the exotic foreigner in movies such as the period drama Memoirs Of A Geisha (2005).
Now and then, she would get a well-received dramatic role, such as that in the science-fiction drama Sunshine (2007), where she played an astronaut. Because the films failed to ignite the box office, she mostly stayed in supporting roles, in the genres of martial arts or action.
Her fortunes changed when the romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians (2018) earned more than US$230 million globally. Its success made Hollywood sit up. It laid to rest the rule that said Asians were not bankable. On the back of her role as dowager Eleanor Young, Yeoh’s career caught a second wind.
When Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan became unavailable to play an immigrant laundry shop boss in an action-comedy produced by independent studio A24, its directors changed the gender of the character and gave the part to Yeoh.
Her “yes” would help take Everything Everywhere All At Once to the 2023 Oscars, where it earned seven awards, including Best Actress for Yeoh.
Carolyn Choo is chief executive and managing director of Worldwide Hotels, which has a portfolio of 40 Singapore properties and 11 overseas ones.
Worldwide Hotels CEO Carolyn Choo going global with Singapore hospitality
Carolyn Choo is a maverick. At a time when hotel prices are skyrocketing all over Singapore, the scion of the Republic’s most recognisable budget chain, Hotel 81, is tamping down rates at her hotels to ensure they remain affordable.
In 2018, the 46- year-old incorporated Worldwide Hotels (WWHG), Singapore’s largest home-grown tourist-class hotel group, to consolidate her family’s properties.
Within five years, two of them Covid-19-stricken ones, WWHG has grown to become synonymous with quality no-frills budget and mid-tier hotels – a crucial offering in an expensive city like Singapore.
The group enjoys an occupancy rate of about 80 per cent for its rooms across the country, in diverse areas ranging from hipster Tiong Bahru to the Chinatown cultural enclave.
As chief executive and managing director of WWHG, Ms Choo made many bold moves in 2023, including securing the acquisition of Parkroyal on Kitchener Road from Pan Pacific Hotels Group for a whopping $525 million – a transaction reported as the largest single-asset hotel deal in Singapore.
Christina Ong and her husband, Mr Ong Beng Seng, arriving to watch British pop star Robbie Williams' show at the Padang during the Singapore Grand Prix in September.
Christina Ong, who wooed Cedric Grolet, Cote, Massimo Bottura to Singapore
Never mind the prices – upward of $25 for an individual serving of cake and $11 for a croissant – the opening of Cedric Grolet Singapore, the first Asian outpost for the French pastry chef, dubbed the rock star of pastries, drew queues starting at 6am.
Queues – note the plural. There was one for takeaways, one for dine-in, one for people who had reserved cakes online.
This clamour for baked goods seems at odds with the Como Group. Its fashion, hospitality, wellness and lifestyle arms are synonymous with stealth luxe, which is, arguably, the most luxe kind of luxe. Queues? For croissants? Surely not.
And yet, those queues speak to the canny ability of the group’s owner, Mrs Christina Ong, to figure out what people want, how to get people talking and buying, and how to bring new life to Orchard Road.
For that, the low-key businesswoman, who never gives interviews, lands on the Power List 2023.
Greta Gerwig (centre) directed 2023’s biggest box-office hit Barbie.
Greta Gerwig triumphs at box office with Barbie
In 2023, the musical comedy Barbie was released to a world eager for a feel-good story about a doll in search of her identity.
Before its release, its trailers had excited a fandom built on the idea of capturing the perfect social media moment through cosplay and group viewings.
If your friend group could not go to the Barbie movie dressed in pink, you had to at least take a shot for Instagram posing inside the human-size doll package that popped up at cinemas and malls.
In July, the movie hit cinemas like a pink tsunami. Its American director and co-writer Greta Gerwig now holds the honour of having helmed 2023’s biggest box-office hit.
Taylor Swift’s music conquered both digital streams and physical sales worldwide.
Taylor Swift making the news in music, career, love life
No one has made a bigger impact in the music world – or in the greater pop culture landscape – in recent times than Taylor Swift.
It has been impossible to avoid the American star as she dominated news headlines and social media posts throughout the year for her many achievements on and offstage.
The 34-year-old’s music conquered both digital streams and physical sales worldwide. Her ongoing sixth concert tour, Eras, is the highest-grossing ever, according to Guinness World Records. It has earned US$1.04 billion (S$1.39 billion), more than the next two top-grossing tours – by fellow American stars Beyonce and Bruce Springsteen – combined.
The Sago House team, including co-founder Jay Gray (front row, far left), at The World’s 50 Best Bars awards ceremony in October 2023.
Sago House group keeps the party going with its cocktail bars and restaurants
Singapore’s nightlife scene roared back to life in 2023 with a flurry of openings and international events packing the local calendar to the hilt.
Perhaps, no other Singapore bar has borne with the vicissitudes of the pandemic as well as the Sago House group of cocktail bars and restaurants.
Founded and run by entrepreneurs Jay Gray, 33, Desiree Jane Silva, 37, and Abhishek Cherian George, 38, the group’s ventures include Sago House, which moved to new premises in Duxton Hill in November; Low Tide, Ghostwriter and SSAL, all in Club Street; and Underdog Inn in Amoy Street.
In her five years as Singapore Writers Festival director, Pooja Nansi has steered the festival in a radically new direction with much success.
Pooja Nansi makes Singapore Writers Festival cool and exciting
Five-time Singapore Writers Festival (SWF) director Pooja Nansi has been picked for this year’s Power List for the exceptional job she has done restoring excitement to the annual literary tent-pole event.
Coming into the high-profile role in 2019 at age 37 – the youngest to do so since the position was created in 2010 – Nansi turned doubters into believers after she took the festival in a radically new direction.
With her brio and open-mindedness, she transformed the pinnacle event for local writers and readers to become more all-encompassing and generous, through inviting community and youth curators on board and a willingness to embrace a wide range of topics – even hosting panels on memes and K-pop.
Tapping her roots in the spoken word tradition, she paired a fierce insistence on challenging – or, more accurately, disregarding – literary hierarchies with her eclectic interests to inject a titillating unpredictability into the 26-year-old festival.
Chantal Prudhomme, chief executive officer of Base Entertainment Asia, presented three overseas touring musicals in 2023: Disney’s Frozen The Hit Broadway Musical, & Juliet and Mamma Mia!.
Chantal Prudhomme of Base Entertainment Asia reignites musical theatre scene
The year 2023 saw Singapore’s musical theatre scene roar back to life. And much of the resurgence can be credited to live entertainment company Base Entertainment Asia and its chief executive, Ms Chantal Prudhomme.
Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur and with a regional office in Singapore, Base is one of the Asia-Pacific’s leading live entertainment presenters.
In 2023, it presented three overseas touring musicals – Frozen The Hit Broadway Musical, & Juliet and Mamma Mia! – which brought much glitz and excitement to the local theatre scene.
Ms Prudhomme, 58, who is French Canadian and based in Singapore, joined Base in 2011 as its head of operations. In 2015, she was promoted to the position of chief executive officer.
