The rise and rise of Henry Golding
Henry Golding feels he is on a roll with the leading man thing. With just his breakout movie role in Crazy Rich Asians behind him, the actor shot straight to top billing status.
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Henry Golding feels he is on a roll with the leading man thing. With just his breakout movie role in Crazy Rich Asians behind him, the actor shot straight to top billing status. “Technically, it kind of just did happen overnight,” Golding says. “I was in journalism as a presenter and travel host so my area of expertise when it came to movies was zero until Crazy Rich Asians came about. And that only came out last year, which is insane.”
Golding is speaking from New York where he is promoting his new film Last Christmas, in which he stars alongside Game Of Throne’s Emilia Clarke.
“It definitely wasn’t expected but it is definitely a trend that I would like to keep up for sure,” he says of bagging the lead male role.
“There is a certain amount of responsibility when it comes to being high up on the call sheet that you bring to set and you have to set an example, you have to work your hardest and really kind of roll with the blows, but also there is expectation from the public. It is wonderful to be at the heart of people’s imaginations, to people’s love of movies and characters.”
Directed by Paul Feig, Emma Thompson produced, wrote and also stars in Last Christmas which takes its title from George Michael’s Christmas classic and features many of his songs. The singer had been collaborating on the film before his death on Christmas Day in 2016.
It is a simple story about a financially and emotionally struggling woman named Kate (Clarke), whose life is changed when she meets a mystery man named Tom (Golding).
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Released this week in the lead-up to the festive season, Golding is already tipping the movie will become a Christmas favourite.
“I seriously think so, it is crazy saying it now but I think it really will be played every single year where there is a chance to. I think we have been starved of a good one,” he says.
Golding puts this down to the movie hitting on issues that are immediately identifiable to a wide range of people — from mental health in Kate’s feeling like she doesn’t belong to the challenges of Brexit and homelessness.
“It is so easy to say but hard to create a movie that hits those points,” he says. “It is finding a real balance of comedic moments and those heartfelt moments and I think this film just gets it right, there is like a magic in the air with it.”
The movie reunited Golding with his Crazy Rich Asians mother, Michelle Yeoh, and also Feig after the pair worked together on comedy thriller A Simple Favour last year.
And while some might be intimidated by working with an Academy Award-winning actor of Thompson’s calibre and star power, it was the opposite on set.
“It was such a joy every single day to be there,” he says. “We were filming the craziest wildest hours, we’d start at midnight and we’d end at noon so it was like reverse splits. And so to get us through cold wintry nights, we would huddle together and hug each other. It was wonderful. Emma would come to set with loads and loads of chocolate and force feed the entire cast, camera crew, lighting guys, everyone. It was amazing. You can’t resist either, you can’t say no to Emma Thompson.”
Golding, 32, was born in Sarawak, Malaysia, to Malaysian mother Margaret and British father Clive. They moved to the UK when he was eight and he returned to Kuala Lumpur 13 years later to pursue a career in presenting, landing hosting jobs on shows including Welcome To The Railworld Malaysia, The Travel Show, Welcome To The Railworld Japan and Surviving Borneo.
He won the role of Nick Young in Crazy Rich Asians after a global casting call in which he was brought to the attention of director Jon M. Chu. His only previous acting experience was in Malaysian language film, Pisau Cukur.
Now though, his dance card is full, with back-to-back movies taking him through to next year and several more rumoured projects in the works.
He recently wrapped Guy Ritchie’s action thriller The Gentleman alongside Matthew McConaughey and Charlie Hunnam, and is currently in Canada filming the big-budget GI Joe spin-off Snake Eyes.
While Golding says he enjoys the perks that being a leading man bring — having his own car for example — he says working alongside seasoned veterans on all his films has been a wonderful learning experience.
Fans have been lobbying for Golding to take over as the next James Bond, something he treads carefully around when asked.
“Who would be crazy enough to turn down or talk badly about that? It is one of the most iconic characters in the world so of course every leading man, it is their greatest dream to portray a character like that,” he says.
“But who knows what is going to happen with that franchise and I can’t wait to see Daniel Craig kick some butt (in 25th Bond instalment, No Time To Die).”
A second and third Crazy Rich Asians is also in the works, although Golding insists he is yet to get the green light on that.
“We hope (but) I seriously haven’t heard anything,” he says. “I think they are getting down the story before they share the script. I am hoping and guessing they are under way with making that now because everybody is doing humungous projects. It really launched so many careers so coming back to it would be wonderful.”
And why not given the broader impact of Crazy Rich Asians in mainstream cinema.
“It really opened (Hollywood’s eyes to a diversity of) actors and roles and stories to be written, not just written for the sake of having ethnicity peppered into the movie,” Golding says.
Whatever happens with the Bond and Crazy Rich Asians franchises or other roles that may come his way, one thing is for certain, Golding has the acting bug and will be on our screens for a long time to come.
“I am in love with it and I hope to be able to choose my projects wisely and to choose movies that I think I want to go watch at the cinema, be in movies that I want to be a part of.”
* Last Christmas is in cinemas Thursday
Originally published as The rise and rise of Henry Golding