Siblings in showbiz

Sisterly love overrides rivalry

Who: Hayley (far right) and Jayley (right) Woo, both 22, actresses

SINGAPORE - In their debut movie That Girl In Pinafore (2013), you could hardly tell this pair of identical twin actresses apart.

Hayley and Jayley Woo, 22, played twin sisters in the movie, donning the same hairstyle and outfits, and often finishing each other's sentences.

Yet, in real life, one sister has soared in popularity, while the other has yet to make much headway in the entertainment industry.

Their Twitter accounts offer a clear enough indication. Jayley, the younger twin by five minutes, has more than 21,800 followers on her account, while sister Hayley has around 8,800 in comparison.

Last week, Jayley was named Babe Of The Year in The New Paper Flame Awards, an annual list of the most memorable and influential celebrities over the year, as decided by public votes.

If the obvious wide gap in popularity is a point of contention for Hayley, she does not show it in a telephone interview with SundayLife!.

Says the bubbly actress: "If I say there is no sense of competition between us, I would be lying. But it's all healthy competition and it helps to motivate us. When I have no jobs, I'll just find ways to improve myself or at least be productive. I'll do yoga or learn a new song and keep myself busy."

Hayley is signed to JM Artiste Network and works on a per-project basis, while Jayley is signed on to MediaCorp as a full-time actress.

Jayley says: "The two of us have actually discussed the competition issue before and we have agreed that we shouldn't let it affect us. This is just a job and we love this job, but we should never get jealous of each other. There's nothing to be jealous about. We should just be happy that we're in this line at all, since we enjoy it so much."

Ask Hayley why she thinks her sister edged her out and she is frank.

"I think she's more outgoing and also more mature than I am. She's more edgy and she's not scared of going after what she wants," she says. "She also debuted in the industry earlier than me, so I think she has more experience."

In 2011, Jayley emerged as a finalist in The New Paper New Face modelling competition, even though it had been Hayley who had originally wanted to participate in it.

Jayley says: "Hayley says she didn't want to do it alone, so she asked me to go along because she wanted company and more courage.

"The judges then asked the both of us, 'Are you willing to chop your hair off?' My answer was, 'Sure, why not'. But Hayley said, 'But how short will the hair be?' I think the judges from then on saw a difference in us."

Shortly after the competition, Jayley snagged a role on Channel U school drama Jump! Skip With Us (2012). She wanted to pursue more acting, but unlike Hayley, she did not need her sister with her at casting calls.

She auditioned for the movie That Girl In Pinafore alone and brought in Hayley with her only during the second round.

"The producer found out I had a twin and asked me to bring her in and we got the roles because the movie had twin roles and so we got that," she says.

Later, Jayley signed with MediaCorp and has since appeared in Channel 8 dramas including The Dream Makers (2013) and C.L.I.F. 2 (2013). She also had a supporting role in local horror flick Ghost Child (2013), where she played the daughter of Chen Hanwei.

She is quick to say that Hayley is "also doing very well now, anyway".

Hayley just wrapped filming for Channel 5 drama Zero Calling as well as local movie Filial Party, where she plays the daughter of Guo Liang and Irene Ang.

Says Jayley: "Mostly, we're doing stuff on our own. I think the twin thing limits us sometimes because how many directors and scriptwriters will have twin roles in their programmes, right? So we need to develop our own portfolio as well."

The sisters are the only children of a housewife and an oil refinery supervisor father.

Hayley says: "Whether or not we get to work together, we will support each other. We are twins and we have natural chemistry and only we know the other one best. We're just happy that we both get to be in this line, doing what we love."

Taking comparisons in their stride

Who: Teh May Wan and Teh Choy Wan, both 31, former models

Former MTV VJ Teh May Wan used to beat her twin Choy Wan to all the jobs. In their modelling days, when they were in their early 20s, May Wan would snag the gigs because she was then the thinner of the two - weighing around 50kg to Choy Wan's 60kg. They are both 1.7m tall.

May Wan, now 31 and the older sister by a minute, says: "We would be up for the same jobs and, unfortunately, Choy was on the heavier side. And you know how it's like in Asia, you always want skinny. So I would get four or five jobs ahead of her and I'm sure she must have been really upset, especially since, as twins, we were always associated as a pair for the longest time. So suddenly if one sister is more 'appealing', it's like, 'What?'"

Choy Wan says: "People in the industry can be pretty cut-throat with their comments and I would always hear things like, 'How come you're bigger than your sister, how come you're not as pretty?' When I was younger, that was quite hard to take, but I think I've developed a thicker skin over the years. It helped that May would always be there to support me."

Things changed for the better after they snagged the joint hosting gig on channel MTV, where they hosted the segment known as Double Trouble and interviewed music acts, such as Backstreet Boys, from 2005 to 2006.

Daughters of a Malaysian-Chinese mother and a Norwegian father, they were then affectionately known as May & Choy. The Malaysian-born stars are Australian citizens and Singapore permanent residents.

Choy Wan says: "After that, we had that niche of being the twin act and that was actually quite nice. We're so close, so it was nice to have the comfort of working with your sister."

In 2007, they also made their silver screen debut as the Durian Sisters in Royston Tan's getai movie 881. May Wan adds, however, that there is a drawback to being a double act.

"The bad thing is, because we were always known as twins, people have that twin tag on us forever. No matter what we do, if they just see one of us, they'll always ask us, 'Hey, where's your sister?" she says

These days, they are doing more individual hosting gigs, especially after May Wan got married in 2009 and became a mother a year later.

Says May Wan, who has two daughters aged four and 21/2 with her Indonesian businessman husband, 36: "My priority is my family now and I'll usually take on only jobs that are a few hours long, because my husband and I don't have help and I'd like to go back to my kids."

When she is working, either her parents or her parents-in-law will help to look after the kids.

Choy Wan says: "When May first got married, she also lived in Indonesia for two years before she came back here, so that's really when I started getting gigs on my own. Now that we're in our 30s and at different places in our lives, there is none of that 'oh, I got a job but the other one didn't'. No matter what we get, we're really proud of the other twin.

"But the thing about twins is that you'll forever be compared. Now... people are still comparing us. They keep asking me when I will finally settle down and have babies myself."

She will be getting married in November to an Indonesian property developer, 34.

May Wan says: "She got engaged five years after me, so she's been dealing with the question of 'when is your turn' for the past five years. But she's become really confident of herself and it wasn't like a case of 'oh, no one loves me' even before she met her fiance."

Despite separate jobs, they still meet regularly - about three or four times a week, says May Wan.

She adds: "We're as close as ever. We're each other's biggest fans and also each other's biggest critics. Other people may tell us that we're doing a great job, but only we will whisper to the other one things like, 'Hey, you look too nervous' or 'You're speaking too fast'. We know each other so well, so even if we had a tiny twitch of the eye, the other will know that something is off."

Sani's sister comes into her own

Who: Sani Hussin, 39, and Rosita Hussin, 38, actors

For the longest time, actress Rosita Hussin was known as "Sani's sister".

Her elder brother Sani, 39, is a stage and television actor with 21 years of experience. Best known as a national service boy in army drama Soldadu (1998), for which he won a Pesta Perdana award for Best New Actor, he had already gained a following by the time Rosita started her television career in 2004.

Says the actress, 38, with a laugh: "So I was always 'Sani's sister, Sani's sister'. And when people used to call me that, I would get a little annoyed. I have a name, you know."

Before joining MediaCorp's Suria channel in 2004, she worked as a flight stewardess for eight years.

She started acting at the age of 15 and appeared in several plays staged by Malay theatre company Teater Kami.

After years of being in her brother's shadow, she was happy to be finally recognised as a performer in her own right: In 2011, she won Best Supporting Actress at Pesta Perdana for the family drama Pinggiran Ramadan (Ramadan Blessings).

"People see me as an individual, as my own person now," she says. "They started calling me by my name and make the effort to know who I am, so that's nice."

At the same awards show in 2011, Sani won the Best Supporting Actor award for the same television drama. Last year, both were nominated again for the second season of the same drama, in the same categories. But only Rosita walked away with a prize.

"It's nice to get the limelight all to myself for once," she says in jest.

"But no, I mean, the thing about awards is that it's nice if we win, but if we don't, it doesn't matter. Whether or not Sani wins an award, I'm so proud of his work. It's just that when you have a brother who's also acting, people tend to compare the two of us."

Sani agrees: "Yeah, that's how it is when you have a family member who is also in the industry. But we don't really get competitive with each other.

"But maybe that's because we're male and female, which means we get different roles. If we had been girl-girl or boy-boy, I'm not sure if that would have changed things."

He is grateful to his sister as she was the one who introduced him to acting.

A cast member had pulled out from Teater Kami's Anak Melayu (Malay Children), the 1992 play in which Rosita, then 17, was acting as "an innocent but secretly rebellious girl", she recalls. So she "dragged" her brother in as a replacement, to play the role of a gangster.

He says: "Actually, she just used me. Our mother was very strict and would nag at her for coming home late every night from drama rehearsals, so she dragged me in to be with her.

"If I came back late with her, our mother would not nag as much because she wouldn't be so worried about Rosita's safety."

As much as Sani says he "hated" the first rehearsal session - "everyone knew how to do all the facial exercises except me and I felt left out" - he realised that he not only had a knack for acting, but he also enjoyed it.

"I used to be all about sports, you know, like football and stuff like that. Arts was considered uncool," he recalls.

After treading the boards for the first time, he was hooked. So much so that he ended up going to Lasalle College of the Arts to get a diploma in drama, followed by a bachelor's degree in theatre studies from Queensland University.

Besides acting, he has directed plays too. In 2006, he helmed Pintu (Malay for "door") by Teater Ekamatra, about religious extremism and terrorism in Singapore.

"I guess I found where my heart truly lies. When I played football, I did it because that's what boys do, but my heart wasn't in it," he says.

These days, the siblings remain very close. They are the only children of a housewife and a retired marine surveyor.

Rosita is married to a leading flight steward, 40, and has three kids aged three to 12, while Sani, who is married to an administrative assistant, 35, has no children.

Says Rosita: "We meet up for coffee and we go on holidays together. But we don't really talk about work. We try to keep our work lives and our personal lives separate."

Yip Wai Yee

Milking the twin appeal

Who: Miko and Yumi Bai, both 21, who make up Taiwan-based pop duo By2

While Mandopop may seem littered with manufactured clones, one pair of performers takes particular umbrage at being mistaken for carbon copies.

Singaporean 21-year-old identical twins Miko and Yumi Bai, who make up Taiwan-based pop duo By2, may be fully aware that their uncanny resemblance to each other helps them stand out in a crowded industry, but each is keen to be her own woman.

Speaking to SundayLife! over the telephone from Taipei, older-by-two-minutes Miko laments: "The bad thing about being twins in show business is that some people might think we are the same person. They treat us as a group and don't think of us as individuals. We hate it when people think we are exactly the same."

In fact, she says, their personalities are polar opposites and they complement each other. Yumi describes herself as an adrenaline-seeking, playful devil and calls her elder sister a quiet, level-headed angel.

At 16, they dropped out of Yio Chu Kang Secondary School and flew to Taipei to launch their singing career. They were offered a 10-year contract with local record label Ocean Butterflies after being talent-spotted at a singing course organised by its subsidiary music school in 2007.

Based in Taiwan for the last six years, they have released five albums: NC16 (2008), Twins (2009), Grown Up (2010), 90' Now (2011) and Paradise (2013).

By2's EP 2020 (2012) was accompanied by A3-sized photo books featuring the twins in soaked, see- through T-shirts and bikinis. One male fan reportedly snapped up 2,000 copies at an autograph session in China's Jingzhou city, Hebei.

In the process, they have gone from saccharine sweet teens to sexy sirens. Last year, they posed for an FHM Taiwan magazine photo spread wearing skimpy outfits and sultry pouts.

The close sisters are glad they have each other for company in a foreign land. Their 56-year-old widowed mother lives in Singapore. Their father died of cancer in April 2007. They have a 28-year-old brother.

Yumi says: "It's nice to have someone by your side to share the stresses of work. We spend most of our free time together going to the gym, for a massage or taking our convertible out for a spin."

They admit that friendly competition exists between them. "We are competing with each other every day, every second, be it during work or during our personal time," says Yumi. "This way, we motivate each other to improve and change our bad habits."

The twins are looking to branch out into acting and recognise that there will come a time when their career paths may have to diverge.

For now, Yumi is clear on where their appeal lies. She says: "It's better to appear in movies or dramas as twins, it will leave an impression on the audience. Later on, we can talk about working on separate projects."

Gwendolyn Ng

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