My first celebrity crush was Ellie Suriaty Omar, a local actor/director.
She's beautiful, smart, super-talented, and--unlike most other Malay celebrities--well-spoken. I had a thing for Malay women who spoke good English.
I was 14. In those old days, when I had a crush on someone, I tended to get a little... obsessed, to put it mildly.
I had a special folder in my room where I kept her photos, newspaper cutouts, my drawings of her, letters that I wrote to her, waiting to be mailed, and presents that I wanted to give to her, should we ever meet. If I had more money than my meager weekly allowance, I might have built a shrine.
I would go to bookstores and scour magazines for more photos of her, and if I couldn't afford to buy them all, I would tear the pages off. I copied her style, down to the way she talked. I would create scenes in my head, and talk to her as if she was sitting right there in front of me. I would tell her my sorrows and woes. I would sing songs and imagined she was listening. I would go out looking my best every day just in case I might bump into her. When things got tough, I would look at the sky and console myself that at least, we shared the same sky and the same oceans, and breathed the same air.
I was pretty much a mental case.
I was pretty much a mental case.
After months of writing to magazines, journalists, and production houses to get in touch with her, one of them actually responded. They breached their code of conduct and gave me her phone number.
So, I picked up the phone one day and with trembling hands dialed the number. I had had it memorized. And for the first time in my life, I learnt what joy felt like. I heard the voice of the goddess I had been worshiping for almost a year--the same sweet voice I only ever heard on television, now talking to me. Me!
I pretended to be a school reporter calling to interview her for the career section of my school magazine. She was polite but hesitant, so I asked for her address instead, saying that I would mail the questions. She obliged. I don't know if she gave me a fake address, because I sent letters after letters, asking for an autograph, but received no reply. I called her a few more times just to hear her voice, and hung up after her second hello.
When we moved house, my mom got rid of a lot of my stuff to save space on the moving truck. The only things I managed to salvage from my Ellie folder were these two key-rings:
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| I used to carry them with me all the time, so that in the unlikely event of bumping into her, I would give them to her as a symbol of my love. XD |
After that, I left school, went to college, grew up, and developed new interests. I watched TV less and less. My feelings for her gradually faded. But I still admired her as an actor, and still looked forward to watching any new movie/TV series she acted in. So in 2017, when I heard that she would be giving a speech at an acting workshop, I quickly signed up.
She was everything I imagined her to be in real life. Although I was no longer as crazy about her as I used to be, it still felt surreal to finally be in the same room as her. I couldn't help laughing inwardly thinking how manic I would have been had this happened 15 years ago, at the height of my passion.
At the end of the workshop, I joined everybody as they queued up to shake hands and take photos with her. She had no idea I was that crazy fan who incessantly called her number and sent a bunch of love letters. :-D
