Singaporean-British actor, director, playwright and musician Daniel York Loh talks typecasting and his latest play
- Daniel York Loh has acted in films including The Beach, TV series such as The Bill and stage plays, but still finds ‘there’s a race thing that gets in the way’
- Also a writer, director and musician, he combines these with acting in his latest play, The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience, now on in London
Actor Daniel York Loh’s website carries an extract from a 2022 theatre review describing him as “a prisoner and a rebel”. Which might have been a fitting sketch of him as a young man.
“I started acting when I was in a drug and alcohol rehab unit in Weston-super-Mare, the rehab capital of Britain,” he says, candidly.
“I was 19, 20, kicking around and they put me on this three-day-a-week gardening job for £50 a week – one of those Thatcher things, work experience.
“I knew this girl in the rehab halfway house; she was doing drama and she said, ‘You can come and watch my play if you want’, so I did. And I thought, ‘Wow, this is amazing, can I try that’?”
Thus began the comprehensive career of an actor familiar from – to offer just a few highlights – television (The Bill, Casualty, Peggy Su!), film (The Beach, Rogue Trader, Casting Fu Manchu) and theatre (Hamlet, Dr Semmelweis, King Lear), who is also a playwright, filmmaker and musician.