By Victoria Barker

WHEN home-grown actor Ng Chin Han sat down for a cup of coffee at a cafe in Tanglin Mall two years ago, he did not expect to find his next acting role.

At the time, he had not yet started filming his role of Hong Kong mogul Lau in smash-hit Batman film The Dark Knight, so he decided to browse through another script his manager had given him.

He ended up reading the whole thing right there and then. "I was drawn in immediately," he told my paper in a recent interview on a trip home.

"Just imagining how they would go about filming what was in the script intrigued me, and I auditioned soon after."

That script would become 2012, an epic disaster movie with an ensemble cast including John Cusack, Danny Glover and Woody Harrelson. It opens here next Thursday.

In the movie, which follows a group's heroic struggle to survive the apocalypse, Ng plays Tenzin, a Tibetan who discovers a secret that the governments of the world are keeping from the people, and who must help save them.

It is the guy's most physical role to date. Plus, the 39-yearold had to learn to speak Tibetan for the part.

To prepare for the Roland Emmerich-directed movie - it was filmed on soundstages in Vancouver over most of last year - Ng worked out for at least two hours daily over three months.

He also immersed himself in the Tibetan language for six months, listening to phonetics CDs and attending teleconference lessons with a Tibetan teacher.

"Speaking Tibetan, on its own, is not difficult. Neither is running, on its own, nor acting, on its own," he explained.

"Doing it all together is," said Ng with a laugh.

For the Los Angeles-based actor, who started out in local drama Masters Of The Sea, hard work is all part of the job. Everything else, like rubbing shoulders with Hollywood's finest, is just a bonus, he said.

"It's very surreal," he mused.

Last year, for example, he was doing red-carpet duties with the cast of The Dark Knight and the group stopped for a photo call.

In the line-up were veteran actors such as Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman.

"And there I was, thinking, 'What did I do to deserve this' " the Singaporean enthused.

But with a growing number of movie credits under his belt, it hopefully will not be long before Ng joins the big league.

Already, he gets recognised and approached on the street, thanks to his Dark Knight role.

He said: "I was just in London for a friend's wedding and was in a movie memorabilia store when someone recognised me and came up to speak to me."

With a shy smile, he added: "It's very gratifying but a little mind-boggling sometimes."

2012 opens in cinemas next Thursday.

vbarker@sph.com.sg

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