“Maybe this was me growing up,” Koh Jia Ler says of a realisation that came midway through We Are All Strangers, when after 14 years in front of the camera, he began to see performance as something he genuinely wanted to deepen. Acting was never a future Koh had mapped out for himself, yet somewhere during the shoot, something clicked. “It felt like I had finally created a craft for myself,” he recalls, and for the first time, the path felt like one he had chosen.
His relationship with the screen began almost by accident at 11, when Koh was selected for Ilo Ilo after a lengthy casting process involving primary school students across Singapore. With no formal training, he approached the shoot as something fun to do during his mid-year holidays. “I always thought I was just lucky,” he says. “I acted during my June holidays.” Six years later came Wet Season, yet a career in the industry still held little appeal.
Across those three films, Koh has grown alongside the characters he plays, and We Are All Strangers asked more of him than before. We first meet Junyang at 21, still trying to work out where his life is going, before marriage and fatherhood bring responsibilities Koh has never lived through himself. Interestingly, parts of the role were already close to home. “Every six months or so, Anthony [Chen] would check on me and ask what I was working on,” he says, with fragments of those conversations finding their way into Junyang. As the story progressed, Koh looked to family and friends who had started families young to understand what adulthood might feel like from the inside.
As he has grown into the craft, Koh has increasingly drawn on the people around him whenever a role takes him beyond his own experience. “You see people from all walks of life. You walk past them, you see them on the bus, you see them on the train. I think being an actor is all about observation,” he says. For We Are All Strangers, he spent a month and a half living at the production office before filming began, rehearsing with his on-screen family until the dynamic between them felt natural.
“I want to challenge myself with characters who are very different from who I am. There is always something new to discover.”
Without formal acting training, Koh learnt largely on set, beginning on Ilo Ilo, where he followed Chen’s direction and relied on instinct, to the point that friends would tell him it never seemed like he was acting. He has always studied his scripts closely, but 14 years on, he now brings his own ideas into scenes and has become more collaborative with Chen, suggesting different ways a moment could be played. Understandably, that has changed the way he watches films too, particularly performers around his age, whom he now observes with a more discerning eye. “Can I play this character as well as him? Can I be better than him? How can this actor play this character so well?” he finds himself wondering.
Having spent his film career so far with the same director, Koh is now curious about what another set might draw out of him. He has practised wushu since he was six, later continuing with lion and dragon dance, and hopes to eventually bring martial arts and screen work together. “I should put two of my favourite things in life together, martial arts and acting,” he says. When asked who his favourite actor is, Koh names Chris Hemsworth, whose screen presence he has long admired. When it comes to action, however, one name crops up immediately: Jackie Chan. Having followed his films and documentaries for years, Koh hopes to pursue that terrain himself, while also trying characters far removed from the grounded realism of his first three projects. Theatre and television remain possibilities too.
With We Are All Strangers closing the trilogy that has followed him from childhood into adulthood, its final chapter arrives just as Koh embraces acting on his own terms. What started as a June holiday detour at 11 has become something he wants to push further by stepping into lives unlike any he has portrayed before. “I want to challenge myself with characters who are very different from who I am,” he says. “There is always something new to discover.”
Photography Owen Tee
Styling Lance Aeron
Hair and make-up Sarah Tan
Photographer’s assistant Damien Nah
