“You had to buy (now-defunct mag) TV Weekly to get a voting slip that you could fill up and send in. I remember buying a few copies to support myself but I couldn’t believe that I actually won," recalled Hanwei. 

"The number of votes I received was in the six-digit range, so when we went into the room to pick a voter to give a prize to, I recall seeing huge bags of slips.” Even then, Hanwei didn’t believe that this was happening to him as he picked up the voting slips from different bags to make sure that all these people had really voted for him.

The happiness that the 51-year-old felt from that night didn’t last long as he made a mistake that he "regrets until this day". After a long night of post-win interviews and a photo shoot, he overslept and missed the Good Morning Singapore live recording that all the winners were supposed to attend.

“Everyone thought that I was putting on airs,” he sighed. “I apologised to so many people, but you could tell that they wouldn’t let things slide even though they assured me that everything was okay. Colleagues who used to treat me well suddenly weren’t as friendly, and in the span of a few months, I realised how stressful it was to be alone at the top.”

What made matters worse was Hanwei’s insistence on keeping his long locks, which he believed was his trademark, for every subsequent role after Fang Lao Shi. “I thought that they liked me because of my hair,” he said. “I kept my long hair even as a policeman and a doctor (…) I was very unprofessional.”

It didn’t help that people around Hanwei couldn't stop gossiping about him, and all that negativity eventually led to him to have a breakdown on the set of Morning Express II. He was sent home by the director, and spent days alone in his room crying before he went back to work. During this very emotional period, he also made the “silliest and most impulsive decision” of his life. 

“Since people didn’t like me, I decided that I wouldn’t [act] anymore,” he said. “I went to the boss and said I wanted to work behind the scenes. I told him that I could be a stylist because I like arty-farty stuff and design in general. The most ridiculous thing was that I asked for my pay to be cut in half. This request made [my boss] so happy, he agreed to my request on the spot.”

Little did he know that this rash decision would only make his life tougher.

“As an actor, you just need to be professional and do your job well. As a crew member, you have to deal with artistes, your boss, your colleagues, sponsors, these sponsors’ bosses, advertisers, directors, assistant directors and so on,” Hanwei shared. “It’s then when I realised how much effort it took just to get one artiste styled.”

He also found out that some brands would refuse to work with certain artistes regardless of how he tried to convince them. Tired and upset, Hanwei wanted to throw in the towel. No matter what he did caused problems — even buying snacks for his colleagues became a point of contention because his boss felt that he was trying to be a bootlicker and told him to stop doing so.

The straw that broke the camel's back would come soon after. “I took part in a competition with a few other stylists and I won because I made a 3D model of a stage complete with models, clothes and lights. The others just had cutouts from magazines and posters, but I didn’t think that far when I was making it because design has been something I’ve been interested in since I was a child. After winning that prize, everyone treated me really coldly [because they felt that I was spoiling the market for them].”

The three years he spent working as a stylist taught Hanwei lessons that helped him grow, both as a person and as an actor. But he was done with all the politics, and thankfully, someone offered a way out.

His boss managed to convince Hanwei (who still had shoulder-length hair) to make his return to acting in Knotty Liaison. And it was the audience's lukewarm reception to his comeback that made Hanwei realise that it was time to cut his hair and move on from the "rich, handsome guy" image he built up over the years.

He decided to “get ugly” for his role as the buck-toothed and happy-go-lucky Lin Yi Qin in 2001's Love Me, Love Me Not, which earned him the first of his six record-setting Best Actor awards. 

Click here to watch Part 1 of Chen Hanwei's interview on Hear U Out.

Photos: Mediacorp, Chen Hanwei's Instagram

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