Unearthing My Beginnings: The Back story of Actor Karen Tan Bee Lin

Everyone has an origin story. I like to think that origin stories can begin anywhere. Some tell of their births. Some of their ends. My origin story would be of the moment of my rebirth. The day I decided to become an actor. 

To arrive at my origin story, I have to tell you a bit of my backstory. Let me rewind to 2000, the year I started full-time work as a Scriptwriter-Producer.

I had just graduated from school in 2000. I had applied for a writing position in a local advertising company and I was invited to an interview. During the interview, the boss of the company revealed that he saw potential in me as a Producer-Writer and offered to train me on-the-job. I had no idea what producing corporate videos was about at all. But I accepted the offer.

I was thrown into the deep end of producing work. It was a roller-coaster. The range and frequency of mistakes I made as a rookie producer were skin-crawling. Clients screamed at me and I screamed back at times. It was the most frustrating work. I secretly hated it. The problem was, my responsible streak made sure that every project that I worked on, I put my heart into it and ensured it was completed and satisfactorily wrapped.

Fast forward to the mid 2000s, when I finally became pregnant. I had wanted a child for a long time. Balancing working life with a growing life inside me was easy. The baby lifted me.

Real life only bitch-slapped me after I gave birth. After my maternity leave ended, I returned to work, an emotional mess who constantly pined for her baby. Office workloads increased substantially, and I officially entered what I still consider today to be the toughest period in my life thus far. First-time motherhood guaranteed chronic fatique of unimaginable proportions. It did not help that I had a very fussy baby with a slew of health issues. My brain ceased to work normally when life became a battle of work deadlines, chronic fatigue, worry about my baby and a growing sense of doom. 

At my worst moment, I realised that I had failed at being a mother, a wife, a daughter and an employee. I had let everyone down. Including myself.

Around this time, I started to get a cough. That cough lasted for six months. I consulted doctors but I never had the time to rest enough for a full recovery.

One day, in the dead of night, my childhood asthma returned in full force. I was lurched over, in complete shock that my body was suffering a full-blown asthma attack. I felt like I was 4 years old again, gasping for breath and crying in complete panic. The only thing was that this time, I had no asthma medicine by my side. I was too ashamed to wake my husband. I can’t remember how I survived that night.

By the time I awoke the next morning, I had realised something. My health and my nerves were completely shredded. That afternoon, I wrote to my bosses and stopped turning up at work soon after. My self-worth had hit a new low and I went off the grid.

I realised a glaring truth - that no one really cares about us. That we are the only ones who are responsible for ourselves. Bosses and clients are always going to squeeze us. And if you don’t see the train wreck at the end of the tunnel, then you are entirely responsible for any calamity that comes to you. My train wreck almost killed me. It took a serious health condition for me to come to my senses.

I stopped my full-time work for three years. I became a stay-at-home mother.

The three years were blissful. I watched my daughter grow and rebuilt my marriage and my health.

Then came 31 January 2011. It was almost midnight on New Year’s Day and I was sitting by myself, head in my palms, wondering what my next step should be. In the weeks leading to that moment, I felt the growing pressure to return to work and contribute to the family income. 

Let’s rewind slightly here. In the last year of my self-imposed three-year break, I was contacted by my previous company to work on a short-term project where I had to produce an advertisement. For the first time, I worked some freelance actors who impressed me greatly with their excellent work attitudes. I felt inspired. While working with them, I quietly observed their performances. I found myself thinking, “I feel like I can do what they do as well, maybe even better”.

That experience stayed in my mind for some months after I worked with them. Looking back now, I realise that my self-esteem was still so low then that I whispered that thought right out of my head. The fact that I was performance-trained did not even come to mind.

Let’s return to that last evening of 2011. That night, on New Year’s Eve, I sat alone and weighed the invisible pros and cons of starting work as an actor. It was a futile effort because the pros and cons were impossible to quantify as I knew nothing about the industry. I just knew I wanted to act.

At the stroke of midnight, with a sip of beer and conjured-up willpower, I made a choice. I told myself, “Tomorrow, I’ll begin researching how to become an actor.”

January 1, 2012. That very day, I created an actor profile on the Asia Actors Database. I had no idea what I was doing. No plan, no agent, no resume. Just a burning curiosity and a flicker of belief.

January 2. I responded to a casting call for an independent film. I got an audition slot. I

showed up. I gave it my all. And I landed the role.

That was my first step into a new world.

And that is my origin story. By typing it out for the very first time, I honour its memory and all the lessons that I learnt from it.

Karen Tan Bee Lin

About Karen Tan Bee Lin

Karen Tan Bee Lin is a Singaporean actor of screen and stage, a voiceover artiste, writer and drama facilitator.  She majored in Theatre Studies and English Literature at the National University of Singapore. Karen speaks English, Mandarin and basic Malay. As an actor, she is adept at comedy and drama; and is a versatile and expressive voiceover artiste. When she craves expression, Karen sings and plays amatuer ukulele.