Jeanette Aw: The laughing lady

Few people know this, but Singapore actress Jeanette Aw is a woman who is prone to having bouts of unbridled laughter. Even when she is playing tragic characters in shows with heart rending storylines. "When I am filming like really serious dramas [and] tragic shows, I laugh all the time. "It started in my early dramas, there were these times that I would keep laughing and laughing and laughing, no matter what my co-actor was saying," said Aw with a giggle. "There was one time when the studio crew had to stop for half an hour, 45 minutes just to let me cool down." That is why she thoroughly enjoyed playing the zany teacher Xiao Chunli in the upcoming Channel U drama "Jump!". In the show, Xiao leads a group of students on a journey to become jump rope champions and turn around their lives, with the help of Speed Xu De Le (Zhang Zhen Huan), a teacher who is also a jump rope legend. "Jump!" gave Aw a chance to finally let her crazy, fun-loving side run wild, instead of holding it all in to play serious roles. "She is like in a world of her own. Xiao has all these [fantasy sequences] in her mind, and I could play with all these things and come up very extreme expressions. "I thought that it was very liberating. I've never done that before," said Aw, adding that it felt great to play a comedic character for a change. "I think it's a good balance, it's good for artistes to try different genres. You can't always be playing like tragic parents." This change came just in time for Aw, who had been feeling emotionally drained, after shooting "Destiny in Her Hands" last year, in which she played a woman who was beset by all sorts of misfortune. "I was crying every day. I had so many crying scenes!" said Aw. Then "Rescue 995" came along where she played an easy-going, naive paramedic Shi Haoran and her mood improved, but after "Jump!", she had become very cheerful and happy. "It didn't dawn on me that it (the characters she played) would make such an impact (on her emotional state) until I started to do all these happier dramas," said Aw with a smile. When asked if the ditzy, perpetually cheerful Xiao, is an accurate reflection of the sort of person Aw really is, she nodded. "People often feel I am very quiet but I am a very playful person! "I would actually think that we (Xiao and herself) are quite alike in many ways. When I am with my friends and all that, I can be quite crazy also." "But it's just that it's not something that everybody gets to see," said Aw, before busting into laughter. Curious about how she behaves in front of her friends? Aw said audiences will "definitely" get to see glimpses of that side of her by watching Xiao in "Jump!".