“I knew this girl in the rehab halfway house; she was doing drama and she said, ‘You can come and watch my play if you want’, so I did. And I thought, ‘Wow, this is amazing, can I try that’?”
Thus began the comprehensive career of an actor familiar from – to offer just a few highlights – television (The Bill, Casualty, Peggy Su!), film (The Beach, Rogue Trader, Casting Fu Manchu) and theatre (Hamlet, Dr Semmelweis, King Lear), who is also a playwright, filmmaker and musician.
And by the end of an entertaining, 40-minute video call in his company, he cannot decide which description fits him best.
“I struggle with that,” says Loh from his London home. “Acting comes easiest to me. I’m not a very good guitar player. I’m OK at making films. As a writer I’ve had interesting moments. But as an actor I feel confident.”
His various talents will be on display from next month at the Soho Theatre, London, in The Dao of Unrepresentative British Chinese Experience.
Written by and starring Loh, with music by pianist-composer An-Ting Chang, it is billed as a “psychedelic gig-theatrical punk pop rap rock riff” on which life path to choose. Is Loh a Daoist?
“I don’t know if I could call myself a Daoist,” he says. “I’m taken with it, the philosophy is extraordinary. It would make for an ideal world. It’s profound and funny, witty. It teaches you to laugh at yourself, which is never a bad thing.
“I’ll be playing a lot of electric guitar in The Dao … ,” says the alumnus of youth punk bands. “It’s semi-autobiographical: drug addiction, recovery, activism. It’s the wildest thing I’ve ever written.”
The title hints at Loh’s membership of Beats, the non-profit organisation founded in 2017 to secure equal employment opportunities for British East and Southeast Asians working in theatre and on screen.
Despite its successes, however, he feels the playing field retains a discernible tilt and finds that recognition can still point to spells in the wilderness.
“Beats isn’t as active as it was because the battle’s been won, but it’s like everything: it’s never as fulfilling a victory as you expect,” he says. “There are many more opportunities but there are still struggles.”
For actors doing well there’s not that much competition here. I think there’s an elite little club in Britain and to get in you have to play the game. You can’t be that outspoken or political
So what would total victory look like?
“Fairness and equality for all and a range of storytelling opportunities,” he says. “The trouble with our industry is that it’s totally in the hands of gatekeepers. People often compare it to sport – the best team wins. It’s not like that.
“With me, it’s because I’m not easy to typecast and there’s always a race thing that gets in the way.
“I would sometimes do these amazing things on stage and think, ‘I’ve really nailed that,’ then I’d be back to auditioning for Mr Chow in a drama series.
“And they’re looking at me, thinking, ‘He’s not really Chinese enough. He doesn’t look like the bloke in the Chinese takeaway.’
“For actors doing well there’s not that much competition here. I think there’s an elite little club in Britain and to get in you have to play the game. You can’t be that outspoken or political.”
Loh, of Singaporean-British heritage, was born in Portsmouth, in southern England, and “apart from a couple of day trips to France I didn’t leave Britain until I was 29, when I first went to Singapore”, he says.
That was to begin a fruitful relationship with the Singapore stage, punctuated by an ST Life! Theatre Award for his performance in Dealer’s Choice.
Surprisingly, given his varied roles, Loh grew up speaking neither Cantonese nor Mandarin Chinese.
“I’ve learned a bit for acting and I could get us around China, but I can’t have much of a conversation,” he says. “It’s an awful lot of graft and I don’t like doing it any more.”
“I’ve got a modicum of choice now, so I exercise it: when asked I tend to say no. It’s no fun acting and thinking, two degrees to the left or right and you’ve blown the line.
“Turning up and speaking Chinese – those were sweaty times, to be honest.” Sweaty? “Yeah, nervous sweat: ‘I’m gonna get rumbled any minute.’”
For an actor with such an extensive résumé, who has appeared opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, Alan Rickman and Mark Rylance, that Loh can struggle for acknowledgement is puzzling.
On being mistaken for Stephen Graham, he says: “I could look at that and get frustrated, because [recognition] is what you get if you’re not mixed-race Chinese.
“I wouldn’t mind a bit of that,” he adds. “But I’m not starving and I’ve done all right.”