GUA-me-up!

13 Nov 2008

“I’m such an ‘emo’. I cry to myself all the time (laughs). Girls are mean,” jokes 25-year-old Sarah Lian, the third child of four children whose globe-trotting parents picked cosmopolitan Vancouver, Canada to rear their kids. “People perceive me as coming from the wild, wild west, like I’ve got these ideals, I’ve got these things that I say, my sexuality, and my comfort, and all that kind of stuff, and so quick to think that ‘she must have done that (slept with) so and so’ to get there, which is just not the case. There’s only so much you can get from that but if you really put your head down and you’re independent things will open up for you and on your own terms.”

As FHM magazine’s top pick of the past year, she’s usurped the ubiquitous likes of Hannah Tan and Amber Chia as your new favourite Chinese hottie. Sitting down for our interview in blue jeans and a T-shirt, Sarah, whose first movie credit was in ‘American Pie 6: Beta House’ as “Hot Asian Girl”, was not at all the man-eating weather vixen she plays on The Gua Centre on gua.com.my (GUA). She essentially loves to talk, laughs a whole lot, and is disarming in a kooky kind of way. Later that night, she would glam it up for an appearance on ‘Latte @ 8’ on 8TV, to make for one of the giggliest, most excitable episodes ever.

“Why I do ‘Latte’ and the covers is to step into the industry because once I’m in there you’ll know how I really am like,” she says matter-of-factly.

Sarah Mui Lian or Mui (which means “little sister” in Cantonese), the name she goes by when not busy being her model/personality/cover face self, has been back from her childhood home of Vancouver for about nine months but she’s wasted no time in getting herself out there as a new Malaysian personality with something special. Look out for her name – or don’t bother. Because for all we know it might just be on every billboard and magazine ad in the next six months.

As for the naysayers, she offers this: “I’m here, a fish out of water, going into your water trying to swim, that’s all. I’m just trying to do my thing here. I’m constantly talking to myself and pushing myself to keep going. So whether you like me or don’t, or think I’m hot, fat, slutty or ugly, I don’t have time to ‘layan’ all this stuff, you know? I just do what I do because I want to and I think I should be because I was born to do something like this, and because, I ought to.”

<>So for all you new Sarah Lian fans, this is how our little game of Q&A went down.