Zoe Tay, Best Actress at 2021 Star Awards: the Queen of Caldecott Hill is still in the game

Zoe Tay, born on 10 January 1986, is a Singaporean actress and former model.

(Image: Mediacorp)

Due to Zoe Tay’s career success and status, she is commonly referred to as “Ah Jie” – which translates to 'big sister' in mandarin and refers to her position as one of Mediacorp's most celebrated and senior actresses.

Zoe Tay is also named the “Queen of Caldecott Hill” by the local media. “Caldecott Hill” is a reference to the location of where Mediacorp, Singapore’s only broadcasting station, is located.

Zoe Tay is the sixth of seven children born to Teochew parents. Tay’s mother passed away in an accident when she was just three years old. Her father then remarried and had a daughter with her stepmother. Tay’s father worked as a farmer at a pig farm while her stepmother was a housewife.

(Image: zoetay10 on Instagram)

When Zoe Tay was younger, she took on the nickname “Jenny” as her English name as others frequently mispronounced her mandarin name as “Jenny”. However, her siblings disliked the name. She then renamed herself as “Zoe” from taking a liking to the name from browsing a dictionary.

(Image: zoetay10 on Instagram)

Zoe Tay is married to Philip Chionh, who is a pilot with the Republic of Singapore Air Force. Engaged in 1995, they held their wedding ceremony five years later in 2001. Together, they have three sons – namely Brayden, Ashton and Nathan.

(Image: zoetay10 on Instagram)

Zoe Tay began her career as a model when she was just 16 years old. In 1987, she gained increased recognition when she was named Model of the Year.

(Image: zoetay10 on Instagram)

Zoe Tay competed in the inaugural Star Search in 1988 where she was crowned the champion. As the winner of the competition, she won a 3-year contract with the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), now known as Mediacorp.

(Image: zoetay10 on Instagram)

Although Zoe Tay initially disliked acting, she eventually began to fall in love with her craft after her role in the 1991 TV drama ‘Crime and Passion’.

(Image: zoetay10 on Instagram)

With her newfound passion for acting, Zoe Tay was able to successfully nail her role as a materialistic young woman in 1991 drama ‘Pretty Faces’. Her fantastic performance in the drama launched her into stardom and made her into a household name.

(Image: Mediacorp)

Thanks to her popularity and star power, Zoe Tay has won the “Top 10 Most Popular Female Artiste” award for ten years straight since the inaugural Star Awards in 1994. The Star Awards is equivalent to Singapore’s version of the Emmy Awards in the USA, which recognizes achievements made in the television industry.

(Image: zoetay10 on Instagram)

As the first actress in Singapore to have consecutively won the “Top 10 Most Popular Female Artiste” award ten times, Zoe Tay’s contributions to local television was acknowledged when she was awarded the prestigious “All-Time Favourite Artiste” award in 2004.

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Zoe Tay won her very first Best Actress award for her role in ‘The Golden Pillow’ in 1996. However, she began to realise that she had hit a wall in her acting and felt “strangely empty and lost”, according to Today. She even contemplated quitting acting for good.

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Since she felt that her acting was becoming stagnant, Zoe Tay decided to improve on her craft by enrolling into an acting class in New York, Today reported. Her experience there transformed her entire perspective on acting, and she sought to become an exemplary actress to other actors by being fully focused on her acting.

(Image: zoetay10 on Instagram)

21 years later, at Star Award 2017, Zoe Tay turned the tide around by clinching her second award for Best Actress for her role in the drama ‘You Can Be Angel 2’. This proves that the veteran actress has still got it in her, despite having not won a dedicated acting award for more than two decades.

(Image: zoetay10 on Instagram)

Two years later at Star Awards 2019, Zoe Tay continued her winning streak by clinching her third Best Actress award for ‘A Million Dollar Dream’. Then in the following Star Awards 2021 which skipped a year and combined the awards from 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the celebrated actress won her second consecutive Best Actress for ‘My Guardian Angels’.

(Image: zoetay10 on Instagram)

As the saying by Ferdinand Marcos goes, “Once a champion, always a champion”. True to her famous nickname, the Queen of Caldecott Hill has made her mark in history by being the only Singaporean actress to have won the Best Actress award four times in the history of Star Awards.

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In 2014, Zoe Tay was immortalised as a wax figure as one of the “12 Iconic Singaporean Figures” in television at Madame Tussauds Singapore according to 8 Days magazine. The honour and accolade bestowed to her by the museum is a testament to her name as the iconic Queen of Caldecott Hill.

Zoe Tay is indeed Singapore’s reigning and everlasting TV queen!

(Image: zoetay10 on Instagram)