Accidential actor who lived the Hollywood dream

CHRONICLE INTERVIEW

 

From humble beginnings in a village shop in Malaysia to being one of Navan's great characters, Soo Hee Ding has led a colourful life that's included sharing screen time with Liam Neeson and Christian Bale.

 

It’s the kind of opportunity film buffs and ambitious young actors would die for. A dream come true. For Soo Hee Ding that dream became a reality.

It was back 2004 and Ding, as he is known far and wide, tasted life as a cinematic superstar by appearing in a Hollywood blockbuster. He had never acted in a film before - and hasn’t appeared in one since - but there he can be seen, in ‘Batman Begins,’ making two brief appearances in the multi-million dollar movie as a land-hungry farmer who kills his neighbour and is forced to answer for his sins.

In one of the scenes (36 minutes, 20 seconds into the film) Ding is brought before Christian Bale (Batman) and Liam Neeson (Henri Ducard) and is going to be beheaded. He only avoids that grizzly fate by Batman’s decision to reject the role of executioner and confront, instead, the evil forces that aim to destroy Gotham City.

“Liam took me into his dresssing-room and we had a chat, he’s a gentleman. He told me about his life, how as a young man he would go and listen to Ian Paisley in the church because he was such a good orator, he wanted to learn from that,” Ding says recalling those madcaps days when he swapped life as a Meath-based businessman to rub shoulders with the superstars - literally.

“Every morning during the filming of ‘Batman Begins’ I would get up at six o’clock, there’s a car waiting for you to take you to the studio, you have your breakfast with the crew, then you go for make up and I have Liam Neeson on one side, Christian Bale on the other, at make up,” he recalls accompanied by his characteristic, hearty laugh.

Walking into Ding’s bar and restaurant opposite Kilcarn Bridge just outside Navan, the visitor is struck by a large picture of him, sporting a Humphrey Bogart-style pencil mustache, along with Neeson. The two are arm-in-arm, all smiles.

Another picture shows Ding with Jack Charlton, the day some years ago the former Republic of Ireland manager called into The Willows; another still shows the late Christy O’Connor junior, who Ding knew well.

Also dotted around the walls are pictures of a Walterstown Gaelic football team Ding played on for a charity match many moons ago. There’s a shot too of Bective footballers, this year’s JFC winners, who he helped with sponsorship. There’s also a sign for Killeen Castle Golf Club.

Ding loves his golf and, not so long ago, he played off an impressive handicap of nine.

Also on view is a picture of his son, David Ding, at his wedding in Dublin earlier this year.

Ding senior’s daughter, Jennifer is also part of the happy group as is Colette who Ding was married to for a number of years before they separated. Ding is proud of his family.

David works as a web developer in Frankfurt while Jennifer is a data analyst in Vancouver. They did good.

For 27 years now, Ding has run The Willows Chinese Restaurant and Bar and it’s easy to appreciate why he’s known well beyond the confines of Navan.
He’s affable, gregarious, someone who loves a laugh and those aspects of his character are among the reasons why he liked Ireland when he first arrived in 1971.

He loves the way the Irish are willing to engage, share a joke and laugh at life’s eccentricities.
“My motto in life is why be sad when you can be happy. Be humble, truthful. That’s how I was brought up, always be truthful,” he adds as if outlining some ancient Oriental philosophy.

“My father said the rice bowl is the same size everywhere in the world but to fill it you have to work hard. No matter where I went I always looked to be better at what I do.”

Ding’s father - Ding Tee Ooi - was a Chinese immigrant who travelled to find work in the rubber plantations of Malaysia.

He married Wong Lee Ing, and they settled down to raise their large family of 13 (nine girls, four boys) in a village close to the city of Ipok about 200 miles north of the capital Kuala Lumpur.

The family were, Ding recalls, “very poor” and from an early age he recalls having to work hard, encouraged by his clearly strong-willed mother. The family ran a village shop where they sold a wide range of products.

“We sold everything, hardware, draperty, medication, I sold anti-biotics as a child, no prescription needed,” he adds with another of his familiar laughs.
Young Ding attended a school run by English Methodists. All the subject were thought through English and the language was to prove very useful to him later in life.

Among his school friends was Peter Neik, who came from a relatively well-to-do family. Peter studied in Trinity College, Dublin and he encouraged Ding to follow. The two remain friends today. Another life-long friend is PK Chew, a barrister who lived in Manchester but is now back in Malaysia.

Ding found Ireland to his liking and he worked at various jobs. Among the list was one of the first Chinese takeaways in Dublin, the Bamboo in Ranelagh. He found he enjoyed cooking and, after a spell in Manchester and a brief spell studying an engineering course in Trinity, he landed a job in Kites, the famous restaurant in Ballsbridge that specialised in upmarket Oriental food.

Eager to start up a food outlet of his own Ding and a business partner went to Navan to look at a premises. Passing Kilcarn Bridge they copped the nearby public house was up for sale.
They also noticed something else: customers were trying to get into the place even though it was closed.

Ding and his business colleague decided to buy the outlet. They re-named it ‘The Willows.’ Over the past 27 years he has looked to improve the business.
“Any money I make I put back into it,” he says as he looks around his well-maintained premises while outside the light of an November evening rapidly fades.

He talks of the day when, in late 2003, travelling to Monaghan, he received a call from an acquintance in Dublin. They were looking for Oriental-looking men to take part in a film and the acquintance thought Ding might be interested.

Encourged by his friend Ding eventually decided to go to auditions “for the craic.”  They asked him to play an angry man and sent the takes to London. Shortly afterwards Ding heard that he hadn’t got the part they orginally had in mind for him but the film-makers thought he could fill another role - that of the erring farmer in ‘Batman Begins.’

Not that he knew all that at the time. When he travelled for shooting in Shepperton Studios outside London he didn’t even know what film it was. “I only knew when I went into the dressing room and I saw the Batman suits and, tongue-in-cheek, I said: ‘I think I would look better in the suit on the left!!’”
He was put up in a high-class hotel, across from Pete Townsend’s house and down the road from Mick Jagger’s pad, and transported around London in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes.

He had his own dressing room. He also got a chance to see how a film is made. “Amazing” is how he describes it. 

In one brief scene he is in a bamboo cage pleading to be released; in the other he escapes the beheading. The former scene took nearly a week to make; the latter was done in one take.

He laughs now to think of how he ended up living the life of a film-star hanging out the the likes of Liam Neeson.

For two weeks at least he lived the Hollywood dream.

 

Soo Hee Ding plays his favourite Irish tune 'The Town I Love So Well' on his harmonica.