Regene Lim is breaking new ground

There is a pivotal scene in Anthony Chen’s new film We Are All Strangers that depicts actor Regene Lim – who plays 19-year-old Lydia – lying to her mother in order to walk out of a church service and spend the day with her boyfriend, Junyang, instead.

“It looks deceptively simple, but with Lydia in that scene, there is worry, excitement, anxiousness and confusion. I did over 50 takes for that scene because we needed to capture the essence of what Lydia was going through at that point,” Regene muses, in between sips of an iced Americano. “We shot that scene for two whole days until the light gave out.”

The 26-year-old laughs, still faintly bewildered at the memory, as she adds: “It was just walking! I was like, ‘What’s going on? Why can’t I walk properly?’ But when I finally watched the film, I understood the nuances in that scene. It shows Lydia’s experiences, her character, and portraying all of that needed to feel right.”

Much like the long-drawn process of filming that emboldened scene, that idealistic streak in her underscores the trajectory of Regene’s life. She admits openly to only being happy when she is able to hit the standards she has for herself, despite what anyone else says.

We Are All Strangers is Regene’s breakthrough film as an adult, a homecoming of sorts, as she seeks to find her place again in an industry that defined a large part of her childhood. After stepping away at age 16 to focus on her studies at School of the Arts (SOTA) and then attaining a Bachelor of Communication Studies (Honours) at Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, she has spent the last few years exploring various forms of screen acting and content creation.

Now, her days are filled with seeking out new experiences, and keeping her mind and body healthy, as she readies herself to pursue acting full-time, a career she describes as a “pipe dream in Singapore”.

The girl in the audition room

Regene’s first memory of the industry was at the age of six on the set of Channel 8 drama Portrait of Home (2005) with local actors Felicia Chin and Pierre Png. She recalls being starstruck as it was “just so cool to see everyone from television in real life”.

Her path there was almost accidental. At the old Caldecott broadcast studios, production companies used to rent out space to enrichment academies, and Regene – whose Chinese, by her own cheerful admission, “was really, really terrible” – was enrolled in Chinese speech and drama classes there. A producer walked past the classroom one day, glanced in, and asked if she might be interested in acting. She said “yes” before she had fully understood the question.

While Regene’s mother was supportive, her father fretted that it would eat into her childhood. The lovely irony, however, was that he was the one who’d named her after Hong Kong actor Anita Yuen (her Chinese name shares the same pronunciation as Anita’s). “He kind of deserves this,” she deadpans.

After being hurtled into the limelight, Regene spent the majority of her primary school years between school and film sets. Even if she might not have fully grasped what acting was then, she knew her roles were meaningful. “Usually kid characters are there for a purpose – to show a different side of the main characters, or to bring more humanity into the show,” she explains.

Regene had a remarkably decorated run for a child actor, winning Best Young Talent at the Star Awards three years running from 2009 to 2011, and becoming the only artist to ever win it three times consecutively. While the accolade was “truly an honour”, she started to question if she had reached her peak.

“As I grew up, it got to me a little bit, because I asked myself, ‘Did I peak in childhood?’ It would be so sad if I did,” she sighs.

Finding her footing

As is the norm for child performers, there is that liminal space between the awards and adulthood where the child has to figure out who they are, without the reflected attention.

That reckoning arrived during Regene’s time at SOTA, where a demanding school schedule left almost no room for filming. She was still in the acting realm though, albeit a different kind, and discovering an entirely new relationship to performance through theatre. At SOTA, working under teachers like Christina Sergeant, Peter Sau, Serena Ho and Sean Tobin, Regene began to understand what it actually meant to build a character, rather than inhabit one.

A self-proclaimed overthinker, she felt that the process was difficult but necessary. She realised how much there was to learn in her field, and confessed she “did not really know what it meant to be an actor”.

“I asked myself, ‘Am I really built for this?’” Regene remarks. “I think it was because I knew I wanted to be an actor from a young age. After that, I just kept thinking about it repeatedly – like I need to do this or that in order to become one.”

For the next few years, she constantly weighed the instability of a creative career against her parents’ quiet, unwavering support, which came with one condition – to get a university degree that she could fall back on as a backup plan.

As a result, Regene went on to NTU, majoring in advertising and public relations, with an exchange semester at RMIT University in Melbourne. It wasn’t a retreat from acting so much as a way of understanding the machinery around it. She came to love journalism, media law and the people behind the camera who kept an entire industry moving, while slotting in what acting and film modules she could.

Two public relations internships, one before university and one during, gave her a taste of what a more conventional career might look like. In hindsight, it took stepping outside acting entirely to be certain that she wanted to return to it.

“It helped me really understand the choice I want to make in the future,” she clarifies. “It was only after I experienced those jobs that I realised how much I love and wanted to be on a set. It’s so exhilarating to build a character, and that collaboration is a feeling like no other.”

Becoming Lydia

The audition for We Are All Strangers was nerve-racking, as Regene had received a notice asking her to come in with no makeup and no script prepared. She also knew nothing about the role except that they wanted a girl around her age.

“Anthony [Chen] has an insane poker face,” she says, grinning. “Once I was done with the audition, he was like, ‘Okay, you can take your casting photos now. I was like, ‘I bombed it.’ But then I was called back for the chemistry test, and at 7pm the same day, they called me to tell me I got the role. I thanked them and when I hung up, I screamed in my house.”

Part of Anthony’s Growing Up trilogy, which features acclaimed films Ilo Ilo (2013) and Wet Season (2019), We Are All Strangers marks Regene’s debut in dramatic fiction films. She spent 45 shoot days as Lydia, a young woman the film follows across several years, from girlhood into adulthood, through love, academic pressure and family strain.

“She is someone who dares to love, and dares to hate. She does not hide how she feels. She is direct, focused on achieving what she wants, no matter what stands in her way,” she states with awe.

When asked how similar she is to Lydia, Regene shakes her head good-naturedly and says Lydia’s fire exceeds her own: “She is a lot more ballsy than I am. I couldn’t have done half the things she does.”

Her modest answer aside, Regene knows better than anyone else the amount of preparation that comes with playing a role well. Before filming began, she delved deep into workshops and piano lessons to ensure that she could portray the character well. Lydia is an accomplished pianist, and while Regene had played as a child, it had been roughly a decade since she had touched a keyboard seriously.

Regene took piano lessons in Singapore, and worked over video calls with Wang Congyu, an established pianist and a friend of Anthony’s, who critiqued her playing remotely. The discipline and grit required to reach Lydia’s level became a way into the character. “It connected me with her,” she says with a smile.

Additionally, Anthony resisted the usual solitude of character preparation – the private homework an actor does alone before arriving on set – but brought the cast together for shared workshops. There were multiple rehearsals and group sessions with her co-stars Koh Jia Ler, Yeo Yann Yann and Andi Lim, who play her boyfriend turned husband Junyang, stepmother-in-law Bee Hwa, and father-in-law Boon Kiat, respectively.

The cherry on top came when the foursome travelled to Berlinale for We Are All Strangers’ world premiere in February. It might have been thousands of kilometres from home, but the sound of strangers responding to a story built out of Singaporean heartland experience was “insane”. People who had never set foot in Singapore, she says, were sniffling in their seats and finding their own connection to a tale of growing up, loving, losing, failing and trying again.

Her next act

After the premiere of We Are All Strangers, Regene is determined to change the narrative of only being known as a child actor. “My love for acting is deeply ingrained, and to not pursue it would be a great disservice to myself,” she ruminates. “It’s all I think about, and I want to do it for as long as I can.”

She feels the weight and responsibility of being an actor greatly, and would not have it any other way. “You are responsible for the whole set as an actor,” she says diplomatically. “You need to know your lines well, your emotions well, your character well – because when the actor does their job right, everything shines together. I cannot waste the effort of everybody else.”

Regene is also hungry for range when it comes to acting: a period drama, something in a fantasy world, theatre and even voice acting, just to see what her instrument can do when it’s stripped down to sound alone. In the meantime, she is focusing on building herself as a person and actor, so she can seize the right opportunities when it comes her way.

She names Zendaya, a fellow former child star navigating the same public transition into adult work, as someone whose journey she recognises in her own. Regene is also disarmingly unglamorous about where she draws inspiration the rest of the time – anime, and currently Baki, a fighting series.

Her off-set joys have gotten a little nerdy. She picked up chess about a year ago, playing casually online and loves the high she gets from winning a game. On harder days during filming, she says what carried her through was a mix of adrenaline, coffee and Guinness (both the drink and her dog, named Guinness).

Most immediately though, she is looking forward to having We Are All Strangers open at home, and for Singapore audiences to watch it and recognise their own lives in it. “I’m super nervous and excited to see what Singaporeans take away from it, as we can be the most critical of ourselves and the work we create,” she says, all smiles.

“I just want them to watch it and feel like – wow, this is really Singapore. I hope they like it. Nobody close to me has seen it yet.”

We Are All Strangers opens in cinemas on Aug 20, 2026.

PHOTOGRAPHY ZANTZ HAN, ASSISTED BY TAN PENGSHENG & DARREL NG
CREATIVE DIRECTION & STYLING: LENA KAMARUDIN, ASSISTED BY CHARIS GAN & JEON JAE WON
ART DIRECTION RAY TICSAY
HAIR JIMMY YAP/KIMISTRY, USING GOLDWELL
MAKEUP ZHOU AIYI, USING CHANEL
OUTFIT FOR FEATURED IMAGE Denim shirt and asymmetrical skirt with ruffles, J.Chung at Metro. Striped vest, Studio Tomboy at Metro. Croc print knee-high boots, Longchamp. Leather double buckle belt, Onitsuka Tiger. Sheer gloves and silk tie, stylist’s own