SGIFF dialogues sees Singaporean actor Chin Han share the leaps of faith and decades of hustle that shaped his career
What would you do if you had only 48 hours to get from Singapore to California, USA? And that too for a job interview?
For actor Chin Han, buying that plane ticket was a no-brainer. Then again, this ‘job interview’ was a once-in-a-lifetime audition for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight.
The fact that he knew almost nothing about the role didn’t matter.
“Nolan doesn’t give out scripts,” he shared during his ‘In Conversation With’ session at this year’s Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF) on 4 Dec. “It could be one word, it could be one sentence, it could be anything.”
Image courtesy of Singapore International Film Festival
Despite the secrecy, he knew he had to leap, a decision made easier by his family’s unwavering support.
“My sister and my mum kind of ‘conspired’ to see me off at Changi Airport, because they were like, this is the sequel to Batman Begins, and it’s Christopher Nolan. No matter what the role was, that was my dream.”
A mad dash to Batman
Armed with almost no information and barely enough time to fight off jet lag, Chin Han boarded a plane. He landed in Los Angeles on a Friday night.
The next morning, he drove to Culver City for the audition.
“Your adrenaline is high, everything’s going great… and then you walk into an office with 10 people who look exactly like you,” he said with a laugh.
Image courtesy of Singapore International Film Festival
However, there wasn’t time for regret or nerves. So he stepped into the room with John Papsidera, Nolan’s long-time casting director. And delivered his audition, the details of which remain a complete blur.
“I was in the zone,” he recalled. “I don’t even remember what I did.”
What followed were six anxious weeks. Then, one afternoon, he got a call from his manager Andrew Ooi’s office while driving.
“Are you sitting down?” the woman on the line asked. Chin Han promptly pulled into a petrol station, where he heard the three words that would change everything:
You. Got. It.
“It”, of course, was the role of corrupt mob accountant Lau — and the start of a glittering new chapter in Chin Han’s career.
Chin Han and Morgan Freeman in ‘The Dark Knight’
Source: IMDb
Soon, he was meeting his A-list co-stars, filming what would become one of the most successful and critically acclaimed superhero films of all time. Eventually, he landed “one big blockbuster hit after another”, from Independence Day to Ghost in the Shell and more.
Chin Han with his ‘The Dark Knight’ co-stars
Source: @TheChinHan on X
Audiences will next see him in the upcoming season of Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender and in Mortal Kombat II, both slated for release in 2026.
From ACS, Hwa Chong & NUS to acting
It’s easy to look at Chin Han today and let “Singapore’s most successful Hollywood export” roll off the tongue. However, his road to The Dark Knight was paved with years of hard work, self-discovery, and a fair amount of thick-skinned determination.
Image courtesy of Singapore International Film Festival
After all, once upon a time, he was just another Singaporean teen juggling his studies and CCAs.
His path will sound familiar to most: Anglo-Chinese School (ACS) on Barker Road, then Hwa Chong Junior College, and later the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he majored in linguistics and economics.
Acting wasn’t even on his radar. Still, he auditioned for school productions “just to see if [he] could do it”. He often landed the part before competitive swimming forced him to turn them down.
It wasn’t until Junior College that he finally committed to a production. He realised when he stepped onstage at the old Drama Centre, as he put it: “This is great. This feels wonderful.”
Fast forward to his final year at NUS. He received a call asking if he wanted to audition for a Citibank commercial. Exhausted from studying for exams but game to try, he went. By that evening, he had booked the job, marking his first time in front of a camera.
That grainy black-and-white ad became an unlikely turning point, teaching him the basics of screen acting and opening the door to early television work.
Image courtesy of Singapore International Film Festival
Soon after, he starred in several English-language productions, including Masters of the Sea, Singapore’s first full-scale English-language drama.
Actress Tan Kheng Hua, who moderated the SGIFF session and worked with him on the show, noted that while people often poke fun at the series today, it’s important to remember they “did not have any other vehicle to learn how to act in front of the camera”.
Source: The Movie Database
It was a crucial training ground, one that shaped their craft and laid the foundation for the careers that would eventually carry them far beyond Singapore’s shores (Tan herself went on to carve out an impressive international path, from Crazy Rich Asians to roles across US television).
Sneaking into Hollywood backlots to distribute headshots
That instinct to learn on the job, adapt quickly, and simply “try and see” would later propel Chin Han towards Hollywood.
After ‘Masters’, his long-time love of American cinema nudged him to Los Angeles in the mid-90s. He arrived with no connections — just determination, a willingness to hustle, and the courage to bend a rule or two.
“I don’t know where I got the gumption to do this, but I printed 200 of my headshots and would go into casting directors’ offices to pass one to them,” he laughed.
Image courtesy of Singapore International Film Festival
The “boldest thing” he attempted was driving onto a studio lot without a pass.
“I would go to 20th Century Fox, say I had a delivery to make, and be told to go around the back. So I go around the back, and I have all these headshots, and I’m putting them around and meeting everybody I could meet.”
One of those meetings proved pivotal. Producer Karen Koch introduced him to director Anna Chi, and after auditioning, he landed the indie film Blindness alongside Lisa Lu and Vivian Wu, marking his US debut.
The final push to Hollywood
After a while, Chin Han returned to Singapore, feeling his “time had run out” in Los Angeles. But Hollywood wasn’t quite finished with him.
In 2005, he returned to the States to co-produce the Asian Excellence Awards, where he reconnected with Ooi, whom he had met briefly years earlier.
Chin Han and his manager, Andrew Ooi
Source: @echelon_talent on Instagram
They caught up, and, in classic Chin Han fashion, he handed Ooi a stack of headshots and told him to let him know if anything ever came up.
A year later, something did.
Ooi, assuming Chin Han was still in Los Angeles, texted: “I’ve set up a meeting for you with John Papsidera.”
And so, the story loops neatly back to the beginning of this article: a last-minute dash across the world, a jet-lagged audition, six tense weeks, and that petrol-station phone call confirming he had landed the role that would change everything.
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Featured image courtesy of Singapore International Film Festival and adapted from IMDb and IMDb.
