Had a great day making this little promo for my friends blockchain project. Some would say that driving a DeLorean under a Jumbo Jet on a runway and then skateboarding on a wooden deck and then jumping to an electric one wheel was a dream come true.
Directed by Gez Medigner, Produced by Robin Schmidt and shot by Oli Kember on a beautiful day on a runway in the middle of somewhere…
…which I guess could be good, seeing as I’m supposed to be an actor.
It’s someting that’s been a part of my face and my life for longer than it hasn’t. Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like without it, but I always know how lucky I am to still have both eyes and I can still manage a smile, even though it’s lop sided.
Some of my friends say that they don’t even see it anymore, but for many people with facial scars I’m guessing like me, it’s the first thing see when they look into a mirror or see a photo of themselves and it’s a constant reminder of how ever it happened.
I always see other people’s, and every now and again you get the slightest nod. Sometimes I see people with fresh facial scars and I wanna talk to them. Ask them how it happened. Each and every scar we have tells a story. Some are tales of stupidity like mine and some are more traumatic, but either way I always wanna say, ‘Hey, high five, bigs hugs, I know how it feels when people look at you and judge you because of a mark on your face…’
I can’t speak for everyone, but if you do wanna ask me how it happened, I won’t mind. Respectful curiosity is always welcomed.
I was very lucky with my scar, for some reason the universe decided to let me keep my eyeball, my nose and my lip…
Cheers for that x
Simon Wan
Simon Wan
Simon Wan
I’m really gunna have to get some new head shots soon and I’m dreading it. Being an actor, it’s something that you need. It’s the first port of call when a casting director gets sent your spotlight but man, I hate it with a passion.
I’ll happily dance naked in front of a burning petrol station for a music video or expose my soul in floods of tears in a two hander play about child AIDS and puppy abortions, so why does the thought of getting new headshots make my tummy churn?
I’m in the middle of growing my hair so I look like half a rocker and half a mental patient. Either way, its gunna have to happen soon, so I’m prepping myself with some luckily well lit selfies. Wish me luck, cause I’ll need it! The thing is, without moving around I just never think any picture looks like me, I look at the pics and think who the fuck is that old wrinkled weirdo. (yes, I know it’s actually me…)
Lately on set I’ve had, oh you look like…
CHINESE JONNY DEPP
LESS HAIRY KEANU REEVES
ADAM ANT (IF HE FUCKED CHINESE JONNY DEPP)
CHINESE JOEY TRIBIANI
and most recently ORIENTAL ELON MUSK.
So if they ever make a biopic where ELON MUSK goes on a revenge rampage because someone stole his pirate ship but ends up drinking coffee in a new york cafe while he invents a space ship that can read the minds of magical llamas…I hope someone gives me a call.
SIMON WAN 2019
SIMON WAN 2019
SIMON WAN 2019
SIMON WAN 2019
So, last April while performing in a play called, Why Not Us, by Rebekah Harvey and directed by Elif Knight, I got a call to see Fiona Weir. After signing NDA’s and reading for a juicy part I heard nothing for months. Then the call came. It was strange. Limo’s to set, lunch in trailer’s and rubbing shoulders with the biggest Hollywood stars I could name. I was treated like a VIP and I wont lie, I loved it. The set was huge, the pressures were real and the screen time….well, this is the thing.
I saw the screener and I’m just about in the film. If you blink you WILL miss me, but being a named character in the Harry Potter world seems to have given me a little sparkle. If at least for the premiere and the days and nights and weeks I was on set. It was one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had so far. I feel like a tiny teeny bit of a fraudster for getting so much love from friends and super star treatment from the press for which is essentially a few shots and a couple of looks. (But I’ll take it) What I did get from the whole experience is that I now know that I can hold my own on set with the big players. I had a one on one with David Yates, impressed Fiona Weir, hung out in make up trucks with all the principles and made a lot of good friends along the way.
Seeing my name pop up as Auror Chang has been a blast. Turns out I am Cho Chang’s grandfather and as a life long Harry Potter fan, it does give me feels. I loved every second of this little journey to the blue carpet and I’m glad I got to share it with my little brother. Even if we did, um, kinda miss the end….So, thanks JK Rowling, Tom Fitz, Fiona Weir, David Heyman and David Yates, let’s do it all again. (this time chuck us a bigger role, I wanna wand fight with Jonny Depp! ) X
As much as I love acting and writing, sometimes it’s nice to get messy with some good old felt tip pens. I smashed out some art work based on my super secret sharpie and magic technique and we hijacked a small corner of the Images Art Festival.
Big shout out to the people of New Symrna Beach, was a fun couple of days in the sun.
Seems like everything is bigger, wider, faster and louder in Florida. So far I’ve met a renegade pirate, an ex BMX rider who loves to build fires and a golf cart music loving Bruce Willis. It’s been interesting, the fauna and flora of Florida life is paced very unusually.
It’s a pace that’s taken me a couple weeks to get used to. I’ve also met an incredibly interesting woman. Ex cheerleader, works nights in a busy bar and owns her own cup cake bakery. We were going to go to Disney Land on Sunday, but as the tale of my love life has recently taken a dip for the cancel, she cancelled, but, her cupcakes are very delicious, as are her beautiful dark hazel eyes.
I’m going to be writing a stage version of Love and a Dozen Potatoes while I’m here with an idea to get it on stage in London for the critical eyes of the casting directors. I’ve also invented a new style of art which I’m really quite excited about and no doubt will be posting some work in progress gubbins as it gets nearer completion, annnnd am about to start some dream projects (yes, me on a skateboard) with the formidable Focal Point Videography, based right here in New Symrna Beach.
CLICK HERE FOR FOCAL POINT WEBSITE n TINGS
CLICK HERE FOR SWEET CUP CAKES n ALSO TINGS
That’s it. Bring on the sunshine and a date with Princess Cupcake!
Actor headshots give me the shits.
It’s my least favorite thing about being an actor, or at least hustling to become one. Put me in front of a movie camera and I’m happy as a lamb in mint sauce, make me stand in front of a stills camera, I will shudder and wriggle and bitch and moan like a teenage cheerleader. I’m not being a diva, it just strikes a fear in my guts because I know that I’m just going to look older, and more than likely still skint and wondering what the hell I’m doing with my life.
Luckily, I had my awesome little brother on hand, a giant cheerleader with a light kit and a video game karate master on standby. I think in the four years since I decided to do the ‘foolish dream chasing project’ these kinda portray the actor I’d like to be.
A bit ruffled, a bit wonky, and a bit wrinkled.
I have so much more respect for models now, being able to shine in front of camera for that 125th of a second and not look like an escaped half oriental mental patient is actually a very impressive skill.
I look at these and think, so….maybe you’re not Jonny Depp mixed with William Shatner with a light splash of Bruce Lee (I always imagine I’d suddenly morph into like in the end of that MJ music video) but, I’m longer in the tooth now and you know what, I think I’ll just get used to it.
(Donnie Yen and Mat LeBlanc at a very very tight push?)
DRAMA REEL BELOW FOR YOU EYE BALL AND EAR-HOLE ENJOYMENTS
What’s the difference between someone who sells books and someone who doesn’t? Simple.
They have finished a book.
That’s all there is to it.
Now, finishing your book may seem like the most obvious thing in the world but time and time again, since having managed to get my book published and sold, I hear people with stories of years and years of blood sweat and tears devoted to an unfinished pile of words. Don’t get me wrong if you are enjoying the process, keep going. If you love watching the seasons come and go as you hover over the words ‘Chapter One’ then that’s cool. Who am I to tell you different. But if you want to sell books and become a writer that people read, for fuck sake finish the thing. Slaving for months over a character description or an intricate storyline is good if it pays off, but chances are, it won’t.
Now I don’t want to come across as a negative nelly, what I’m saying is complete. Don’t try and write the perfect book. No books are perfect and if it’s stopping you actually getting to the end then it’s doing you no good. Precious. Forget it. Your book will take up a few days at most of a stranger’s attention. Hopefully they’ll love it. Your well manicured prose and delicious payoff will delight the reader and if they’re a kind soul, they’ll tell their best mate to buy it too. But this will never happen unless you finish the thing. Be honest with yourself. Does your writing excite you? If the whole process has become a mind bending chore, stop. They say everyone has a book in them, yes. Not everyone can get it out.
Don’t be afraid to absolutely fucking love what you’ve written. If you don’t love it, no one else will. The magic thing that happens when you finish your book is that all of a sudden you transform from just another someone ‘writing a novel’ to someone who has ‘written’ a book. It’s a very powerful difference. Don’t worry if it’s good or not. Worrying if your words are sizzling and tremendously clever takes away from the fundamental point of writing something. Telling a story. Conveying an idea. Communicating. I read a lot of blog posts from tortured writers, ten years of toil and rewrites and convolution and pain. And still only on page 21. Waste of time. If you can’t finish a book in a decade and you hate it, for fuck sake jack it in.
If on the other hand the thought of a blank page fills you with a manic glee. If the spirals of coincidence and poetic grace feel like they have to explode from your fingertips. If you honestly feel that you have something to say, or a unique point of view that might change the world, then finish the damn thing. Then someone can read it, and your second book will be even better.
My first book, which I finished, can be delivered to your door with this magic click…
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Dozen-Roast-Potatoes-Simon/dp/1910692905
Great, this is going to be easy, a couple of well timed cheeky tweets and a thought provoking Instagram pic and I’ll be the centre of the digital playground. Wrong. So very wrong. I have managed to gain an extra 5 twitter followers in a week. Boom! Eat that Kanye, but as much as my five new shiny followers are probably the best people I’ve never met there is a large part of my brain that’s telling me that this is all just bollocks. Let’s have a look at the very basics…
Six, repeat SIX. Streams of mindless drivel that I now have to not only engage with, but delight. That’s six separate log-ins, six sets of email updates, six sets of anxiety about how much attention my digital cheap lunch is getting. Frankly, it’s gone too far.
Anyone pursuing a career in the media will be well aware of this cyber dance, but the problem is that it’s all the same content, give or take a post or two. It’s a recycling of trends and marketing campaigns that have taken over our lives. We have to puke our everyday monotony into as any electrical devices as we can now, just to feel normal.
I’m aware that I’m writing a blog, I’m adding to the ever growing bucket of computer junk, but I think I have a good reason. I wrote a book and I’m trying to sell it. I need to engage with an audience and subtly court them into eventually buying the fucker.
As much as I do love it when I get a poem or an inspirational Jpeg popping up in what ever feed pings first, I don’t want to hear about how you hilariously, “Thought the light was on, but then when you came home it wasn’t, phew crisis averted #alwayshappenstome”. It’s just boring toss. It’s boring toss, I know it, you know it and everybody else knows it. Six ways to tell the world that you are someone. Six ways to let people know that you are glad that little Gerald is okay after he closed his eyes when he was tired. Six ways to let people see what you had for dinner, no one cares! Hang on, I’m actually really interested in dinner, but I’m half Chinese and my yellow half has been taking food pics since they invented digital cameras somewhere in the Ka-Ching dynasty.
If you need to post something on Facebook, make it interesting, lie. For example.
“Totally robbed an Arab today in Harrods and spent all the money on cocaine and ended up marrying a horse”
If you need to post something on Twitter, make it sexy, lie. For example.
“Just shagged Ariana Grande in the Arsenal ground. #shejustwantedabiteofmyhalftimepie”
You know, that kind of thing.
I’m not trying to badmouth all the ways that we can communicate. Communication is the very best thing we can do. Once you stop talking, you fill up the silence with paranoia and uncertainty, but it doesn’t mean we have to just constantly talk shit.
If you feel an overwhelming desire to say something, if your passion for something is bursting so intensely that you have to scream it from the top of the world, then by all means, do it. I want to hear it, if it’s that important for to you share it with me, it would be an honour. If you have just had a baby, I understand it’s an adventure, new life, little footsteps, show the world. You had a really shit day, you got mugged, you feel lonely and scared, of course tweet about it, vent #justneedtogetitoutofmysystem, you’ll feel better. If you saw the most beautiful sunset or the most hilarious cat poo that looks like a statue of Ghandi for god sake, post it! I really want to see. But don’t and I repeat don’t feel like you need to post something. You are much more than your profile picture.
It’s quite alright to NOT give a fuck about refugees, and it’s quite okay to feel shit and ugly and want to stay in bed and ignore everyone. You don’t have to tell the world you want to ignore everyone, just ignore them. If telling someone makes you feel better, thats good. Sharing is caring they say, but instead of instantly swiping or clicking or reposting or pasting, use the telephone you have in your pocket for what it was designed for. Talking. Bob Hoskins and all that shit.
SIMON WAN 