Tan Kheng Hua

Kheng took an interest in acting when she took a theatre elective, Acting 101, while in university in the US. After returning to Singapore, Kheng took up a job in public affairs and acted in her spare time.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Science Magna Cum Laude degree from Indiana University.

The first stage play she performed in was John Bowen's The Waiting Room directed by her cousin Ivan Heng. It took almost a decade before Tan became a full-time actress.

In the theatre, she is in the original casts of landmark plays such as Beauty World, Lao Jiu, Descendants of the Admiral Eunuch, Animal Farm, Cooling Off Day and recently, Falling, for which she won her second Life! Theatre Best Actress Award.

In television, Kheng is best known for her role as Margaret in Singapore’s longest running and most successful sitcom, Phua Chu Kang Pte Ltd, for which she won an Asian Television Award for Best Actress (Comedy). Her first foray into Mandarin-language television, Beautiful Connection, earned her a nomination at the Star Awards.

On the international scene, Kheng is seen in The Philanthropist (NBC, Lead Supporting, Actor) The Patriarch (UFA, Lead Supporting, Actor), Serangoon Road (HBO Asia Original Series, Lead Guest), The Empress Dowager in Netflix Original Series, Marco Polo and Kerry Chu in the Warner Bros. film Crazy Rich Asians, which premiered in 2018.

Kheng also creates and produces for stage and television in Singapore including the critically acclaimed cabaret act, The Dim Sum Dollies; the dramas 9 Lives and Do Not Disturb, the latter being the first local TV series to receive the maximum 5-star rating from Straits Times Life!, the Mandarin serial, Mr & Mrs Kok and lifestyle infotainment on The Asian Food Channel.

She also creates and produces theatre and festivals outside of Singapore including No.7, an original theatre piece commissioned by the Georgetown Festival 2011 in Penang. No.7 was sold out with a waiting list. In 2014, she brought 64 Singaporean and Malaysian artists together in The SIN-PEN Colony to Penang’s Georgetown Festival celebrating the cities’ shared heritage of food, visual art, music, theatre and design. The theatre segment within The SIN-PEN Colony, 2 Houses, sold-out within four days. She conceptualized and produced The Twenty-Something Theatre Festival 2016 and Tropicana The Musical which opened to rave reviews on April 2017.

For her contributions to the arts, Kheng was one of fifty local stage personalities in an exhibition celebrating 50 years of Singapore theatre and part of twenty contemporary artists chosen to represent Singapore in Singapore: Inside Out, a showcase presented by the Singapore Tourism Board in Beijing, London and New York City to celebrate Singapore's fiftieth anniversary.

• Art Nation Best Actress Award (2003)
• DBS Life! Theatre Award, Best Actress (2002),
• Asian Television Award, Best Comedic Performance by an Actress (2002),
• Asian Television Award Highly Commended Performance by an Actress (2003),
• Star Awards (Mandarin) Nominated Best Supporting Actress (2002),
• Asian Television Award Runner-up Best Current Affairs & Magazine Presenter (2000),
• JCCI Singapore Foundation Culture Awards for Contributions to Singapore (1998),
• Critics Choice for Best Actor Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theatre (1997), *Indiana University Founders Day Award for High Scholastic Achievement (1984, 1985, 1986), *National Colours Awards for Gymnastics (1977) (Noteworthy Selections: 21 Remarkable Women of *Singapore by the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware))