10 things to know about actor and singer Bonnie Loo

Bonnie Loo was born on July 12, 1994, in Ipoh, Malaysia as the oldest of two children. At the age of 12, her family relocated across the straits for her education and her father's work in Singapore. Bonnie Loo also began to take singing lessons when she was 10 and started competition regionally at five.

In 2013, Bonnie Loo participated in the fourth season of the reality singing competition Campus Superstar. Lo and behold, the then-19-year-old clinched champion with her singing. She went on the sign with Mediacorp, thereby kickstarting her road down the local entertainment industry. As part of the prize package, she also got to perform with Ding Dang in Glass Anatomy The Musical.

Fun fact: Bonnie Loo was the first female to win the competition.

A year later, Straits Times named Bonnie Loo as one of the four new faces to watch on television, alongside Hong Ling, Sora Ma and Carrie Wong. That is because, in 2014, Bonnie Loo had gone on to star in three dramas - Against The Tide, C.L.I.F. 3 and The Caregivers - marking her move into acting as well.

In the same article, this was what Bonnie Loo had to say about her opportunities. "I've mostly focused on singing. But now that I'm given the opportunity, I should do my best. I hope to be good in singing and acting."

Since her 2014 debut, Bonnie Loo had gone on to star in bigger roles on the small screen. Credits include Tiger Mum (2016), Hero (2017), Mightiest Mother-in-Law (2018), C.L.I.F. 5 (2021) and Key Witness (2022). Her acting in these five shows each scored her a Best Supporting Actress nomination at Star Awards too.

In 2021, Bonnie Loo took home her first Top 10 Most Popular Female Artistes trophy.

This happened after the two starred alongside each other in The Heartland Hero (2021). In the series, Bonne Loo's character, Sophie, had promised her mother not to get married to Ian Fang's character. Yet the couple decided not to heed her words and the mother unfortunately collapsed on the day of the wedding due to a heart attack. This left Bonnie Loo's character wrecked with guilt and Paige Chua, who was her boss in the show, had to console her.

After the scene aired, Paige Chua took to her Instagram to dedicate this message to Bonnie Loo.

"Dear Sophie,

Seeing you so upset is really hard for Boss Jiejie too. I really miss your fiery, straightforward words, and your super infectious laughter, and, and… your cute smile… Without you around, Seoul Toast has become much quieter. Without you, I’ve become way more bored. Get well soon, okay.

Love,

Boss Jiejie"

Paige Chua's shoutout wasn't Bonnie Loo's only celebrity call-out though. In 2020, her idol Jam Hsiao gave her a shoutout after she share a video of her dancing to his new song Dance Monkey with a young boy. "Recently my idol Jam Hsiao released a new song. I'm trying the Dance Monkey Challenge. I wonder what Jam thinks of it, I shook my shoulders as if I was crazy. And this little boy dancing with me dances with so much style!"

The post eventually caught the eye of Jam Hsiao, who liked the post and shared it on his Instagram Stories. He praised her rendition and called it "Cool!"

As we had to stay home during the Covid-19 circuit breaker period, we found new ways to keep ourselves entertained. And like many of us, Bonnie Loo went onto the social media app TikTok and began posting clips of herself. She revealed that filming and editing these short videos is "actually a lot of work involved" and takes her "one full day or at least half a day filming and editing."

"A part of it is about discovering something new about myself. I make all these videos for fun. After all, my job is to entertain people so hopefully I am able to cheer them up during these hard times. Don’t need to be sad lah!"

Bonnie Loo has since racked up 51.1k followers on her TikTok account with over 311k likes.

When asked how she would keep her mobile phone safe and secured, Bonnie Loo said, "I feel like it’s very hard to protect yourself. But you can’t leave your phone unsupervised either way. Instagram now has a two-step verification process which I use, but it also doesn’t mean I am 100% protected. I also hold onto my phone all the time but I have nothing to hide lah. A few months ago, I had a lot of people pretending to be me on Facebook and Instagram. They made their accounts look like my official one. All my fans, and even my friends and family all thought it was my actual account so that made me worried. I made a report and they were all taken down."

"I fell out with my Malaysian ex-BFF, who was in the same Singapore secondary school as I was. We fought over something and we haven’t spoken to each other til this day. We don’t text and we’re not following each other on social media. Besides, I’m in Singapore now, which makes it harder to reconnect.

We had a crush on the same guy but she didn’t tell me that he confessed his feelings to her and that they started dating. I felt so betrayed! Back then, we took the same bus from Malaysia to Singapore and back every day. We went to the same school and I would tell her everything about my life, including who I liked. I thought we were BFFs! So all that time I was gushing about that guy, she was dating him behind my back! When she finally told the truth, I just said “Oh, okay” and we never talked from then on.

This happened so long ago that I don’t care anymore! I would like to connect with her but I don’t know where she is now. But I still feel a little angry ‘cos I don’t understand why she’d treat me like that! She was my BFF and I shared everything with her… She knows I like that guy but she didn’t even help me or tell me anything, so I would like to ask her why she did that? There are so many guys in the world so why did you choose the guy I liked?!"

Bonnie Loo referred to herself as the "third wheel" or a "lightbulb" in the relationship between Hong Ling and Nick Teo. In an Instagram post in 2022 dedicated to the couple after they had gotten engaged, she reflected on their relationship.

"Throwback to seven years ago, Nick, Hong Ling and I technically entered showbiz at the same time. We went for acting lessons and would hang out together. We stayed near one another, and so we would always go around as a trio. Later on, I slowly became a 'lightbulb'.

I'm very happy that Hong Ling has found her happiness. A relationship requires hard work from both parties, this is something I see in them.

He loves her very much and she's the centre of everything he does. She always has him in mind and is no longer wilful because of him."