“The expectation that women need to be married by a certain age is old fashioned to me,” actress Jessica Hester Hsuan says in an unbridled interview with StarLifestyle.
The 50-year-old Hong Kong star – who up until recently had to fend off rumours that she was tying the knot with longtime friend and colleague, actor Louis Koo – believes in living life on her own terms.
“I’m not married and I don’t feel pressured to get married because it’s my life. And it’s about what I want, it’s not about what people want.”
The subject of marriage pops up in our exclusive interview with Hsuan, as her most recent TVB drama, Armed Reaction 2021, sees her character pressured by her peers to find love.
Hsuan’s character, 40-something Diana, has been left at the altar three times. And it doesn’t help that she keeps running into one of her exes and his newly-pregnant wife.
Hsuan lets in on why she herself isn’t in a hurry to walk down the aisle.
“I think it’s because a lot of my friends are not happy in their marriage. I think it’s important to be happy. If you’re married to someone who you don’t get along with, that, to me, is misery, ” she reasons.
The actress adds she doesn’t feel the need to get married even if she finds the right person because “it’s about companionship”.
In the first of three stories on Hsuan, she reflects on her nearly 30-year acting career, from her early days as an actress to her rise to become one of TVB’s top-tier stars.
“I was very lucky, ” Hsuan, also known by many as Suen Huen, recounts her foray into showbiz after returning from London with an engineering degree in 1992.
“I didn’t really have to go through much. I started out in 1992 as an emcee on (entertainment information programme) K-100 and by the next year, I played the second lead in a drama. A few years later, I played leading roles,” she recalls.
From then on, everything she touched seemed to turn into gold. Hit drama after hit drama followed such as Old Time Buddy, Witness To A Prosecution and Square Pegs just to name a few.
So much so, Hsuan was regarded as one of TVB’s fadans of the 1990s and 2000s, a term used to describe the most popular actresses of the day.
“I didn’t really think too much about being a fadan, ” she recalls those moments of intense fame. “Because I think at that time we were more like robots working on dramas non-stop.”
She continues: “But of course it was fun being one of them, we did promotions and met a lot of fans everywhere in different countries.”
Hsuan also remembers looking forward to the annual TVB anniversary awards to find out who among her peers would win the coveted Best Actress trophy.
The actress not only had to get used to being famous, she had to get used to being scrutinised.
“I was not used to people criticising. I always tried my best. I don’t think I did anything wrong. I was just being myself. But then I got criticised in all sorts of ways, which I still remember was quite hard to take at the time.”
Hsuan found a way to rise above. “You learn that it’s not actually about what you are or what you do, it’s about gossip news.
“So with a lot of things, I don’t actually need to explain (to people), as long as I know what I’m doing and I’m not harming others.”
All episodes of Armed Reaction 2021 are available on Astro Go.
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