PUBLISHED ONOctober 29, 2026 10:44 AMBYYeo Shu HuiMichelle Liow Yin Yin's life-changing moment happened one evening in June 2001 when she was awarded Star Search overall female winner.
Applauding for her victory on and offstage that night included Hong Kong Heavenly King Andy Lau and actress Sandra Ng, as well as Chinese actress Sun Li, who was also a contestant in Mediacorp's talent competition that year.
The Malaysia-born actress, now in her 40s, recounted to AsiaOne through a recent phone interview from Los Angeles about the months following her victory: "Immediately after I won Star Search, Mediacorp was very generous and put me in quite a few big projects.
"I started hosting a live music show with Jack Neo. I was also in local drama The Reunion (2001), which I believed was the biggest show of that year... starring Tay Ping Hui, Joey Swee and Chew Chor Meng. That was the first television show I filmed. We shot in Bangkok for a couple of weeks too."
Prior to entering showbiz, Michelle was a sales and marketing executive for a fashion brand in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for about a year, after graduating with a business degree from National Taiwan University in 1999.
Having a keen interest in performing arts since she was young, she was active in dance and theatrical groups during her time in Taiwan, performing in plays and joining multiple singing competitions with her roommates.
"I didn't have a specific ambition, such as thinking I would be a performer one day. I just knew that performing was in my blood and heart. Whenever I am on stage, it always makes me feel so alive," she said.
Despite that, the transition from casual to full-time acting was a challenge as Michelle recalled: "Frankly, it was exciting and stressful for me, because performing in front of the camera was very different from my experiences in school, where I was mostly on stage. I had to learn a lot of things like blocking techniques. My role was also pretty action-packed, which I enjoyed...
"But it was also very exciting because I got to travel with seasoned actors and see another part of the world. I filmed my character's death scene at Chatuchak market in Bangkok and laid in a hospital bed in Chiang Mai. Who gets to do that, right?"
She also remembered sleepless nights when she felt she could have done better in her performance, and hoping not to disturb her roommate Joey, she went into the toilet of their accommodation to study her script into the wee hours.
After four years with Mediacorp, acting in dramas including A Child's Hope (2003), The Ode to Life (2004) and Family Combo (2004 - 2005), singing for drama soundtracks, as well as hosting television and radio programmes, Michelle felt it was time to join her family who had migrated to the United States (US).
She said: "I was alone in Singapore at the time and got into many great projects... the year before I left, I also became the spokesperson for Balmain watches. All these projects were very significant to me.
"But I knew in my heart I've always had an adventurous spirit, and I wanted to experience life and different kinds of growth in a Western country. When my family moved to the US, it opened up a chance for me to decide if I wanted to join them, as well as see how my niece and nephew grew up in the States.
"It was not an easy decision for me [to leave], but it also wasn't a tough one for me to make."
Michelle left Mediacorp in 2005 to start afresh in the US and returned to the corporate world, where she began from a junior position in the fashion marketing industry.
She is a star even away from showbiz, unlocking achievements including attaining a master's degree in fashion marketing, climbing the corporate ladder in fashion and beauty tech companies, managing a project for Google and helping a Japanese investor build and run a small beauty e-commerce start-up business in San Francisco for a few years.
"In some parts of my heart, I knew there's a fire still burning for performing," she said.
With that, she occasionally took up acting roles in short films while holding down her corporate job, even winning Coven Film Festival's Best Actress Emerging Talent in San Francisco for her performance in the short film Please Translate (2018) directed by Kelsy Lua.
Michelle shared: "That kind of signaled to me to put in more time and effort in acting. But it took me a couple of years to finally decide, and it was a hard decision, to put aside my corporate career and come back to full-time acting.
"It's a very tough decision to start over again, equally hard when I first came to the US to work in corporate again. In my life, there are many starting overs."
Starting over again is never easy, and Michelle told us that building a full-time acting career in the US is "even harder than building a start-up business", as she had to find her own position in the industry.
She recalled she started just like any actor with or without experience, attended many acting classes and went for over 100 auditions in the first year, even though her booking rate was "probably less than 10 per cent".
Despite her experiences, Michelle believed it helped her learn to manage rejections.
She elaborated: "I am actually very grateful because being an actor here helps build my character to become stronger and much more resilient.
"Because of this, I have been playing quite a lot of female characters who look soft and gentle on the outside but actually have a lot of resilience and strength. When they are hit with hard times, they always choose hope or project some sort of positivity. I think I found my calling in this aspect as an actor."
Because of her accent, Michelle was initially typecast to play characters who are Mandarin-speaking and immigrants who can't speak English well.
She believed the situation has improved in the last few years: "Actors with accents actually become more valuable because it shows we are more unique. American castings usually look for an actor's uniqueness and personality, instead of being good looking, so this became an advantage for me.
"But I am still constantly trying to work on how to adjust my accent for the roles I receive."
Over the years in the US, Michelle's acting credits spanned more than 15 short films, miniseries and television series.
In 2024, she performed in some significant projects, including the historical docudrama series Wild West Chronicles season four, where she plays Wong Hal Shek, a real-life figure who migrated to the US from China with her husband Wong Fee Lee in the 1880s during the California Gold Rush.
In the same year, she acted in LA-based Colombian film director Juan Zuloaga Eslait's short film Before the Winter as Yu. In 2025, the short won third place at the Asian World Film Festival, as well as Student Short Film Award at the American Pavilion Emerging Filmmaker Showcase at Cannes, France.
Michelle also performed in Chicago-based Chinese film director Lu Yiling's Po Act 1 Part 1 in 2024 and won Best Supporting Actress in a Short Film for her portrayal of an abusive woman Tang Yang at the Kraken International Film Festival in Milan, Italy, that same year.
She told us winning an acting award for Tang Yang came as a surprise for her.
She added: "I was debating whether to do this role, as I always try to play characters with a positive message. But I figured she would be a good role, because someone has to play the villain in a show.
"The director did a lot of research about family dynamics and domestic violence issues in China and wrote this story based on it. There are a lot of personal experiences [in the short] and if no one plays the villain, how would she be able to convey her message and bring more awareness about domestic violence in China? So, I decided to do it to convey a good social message."
This year, Michelle continued to expand her acting credits, appearing in American film producer Dhar Mann's short films, as well as upcoming Wild West feature film Camerados, directed by filmmaker-screenwriter Kyle Ensrude.
Michelle shared that filming for Camerados was done in old mine fields in Nevadas, where there were nights she filmed under a sky full of stars, and it was a "very special experience" for her.
The film is also significant for her because she got to work with American actor Ricardo Chavira, best known for playing Carlos Solis in television series Desperate Housewives (2004 - 2012).
"Desperate Housewives was one of my favourite American television shows. I watched him on screen then and never thought one day he would be my screen partner," she laughed.
Outside of work, Michelle continues to hone her acting skills, taking acting classes as well as refresher classes for singing and music theatre.
She also likes to cook, trying out different approaches to recipes and goes snorkeling occasionally. As someone who enjoys watersports, Michelle added she hopes to pick up surfing someday.
Michelle also volunteers when she has time. She told us she helped out at non-profit organisations interacting with the elderly, homeless and children when she was living in San Francisco. "I feel rewarded through volunteering and interacting with people. They help me to learn more about myself and see life in different lenses."
Though they are in different continents and time zones, Michelle remains in contact with the artiste friends she made at Mediacorp, including Nick Shen, Cassandra See, Zen Chong, Carole Lin, Apple Hong, Jeff Wang and Florence Tan.
"It's always my dream to get an international project or one in Singapore where I can act with my artiste friends from Mediacorp, to catch up with them and see how we have been growing on screen. I think that would be fun," she said.
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