The vocalist for his pop band The Sam Willows, Benjamin Kheng is a Singaporean musician, actor, and writer who just earned a coveted spot on Forbes’ annual 30 Under 30 Asia list.
The band has played shows all over the world and has approximately 15 million Spotify streams. Take Heart, their Grammy-winning album, peaked at No. 1 on the iTunes and Spotify charts in Singapore and reached the top 10 of Spotify Viral in Malaysia, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Hong Kong.
Benjamin was contacted by Channel News Asia last year in his role as a singer-songwriter to appear in their ROAR! – 2019 National Day Special. This documentary follows four musicians as they set out to write openly about Singapore and contemporary social challenges.
Beyond music, Benjamin’s corpus of work encompasses all facets of performing in theatre, television, and film.
In Channel 5’s three-part telemovie Love is Love – Fat Hope, Benjamin made his acting debut as “Pete,” the central character who sees behind the surface to find love. The biopic Wonderboy’s titular character was created by Benjamin recently. For his performance in the Toggle series The Breakup List, he was also a nominee for Best Actor at the Raindance Film Festival. Benjamin made many local productions in the previous year, including She’s A Terrorist and I Love Her, She’s A Terrorist and I Love Her, Dead Lucky (Toggle), FAM (Mediacorp Channel 5), The Intruder (Toggle), After Love (Toggle), and The Intruder (HOOQ).
He has performed on stage in Romeo & Juliet (Toy Factory) and recruited Ken Chow in the hit musical adaptation of the hit local film Ah Boys To Men: The Musical (Running Into The Sun). In one of his most recent theatrical productions, Fun Home (Pangdemonium), he played several characters, including Pete, Mark, Bobby, and Roy. He will take part in the Full Monty season of Pangdemonium in 2020.
At the age of 17, Benjamin made his debut in the arts and entertainment sector as a radio producer/host on Lush 99.5FM, where he hosted two ongoing programmes called The Art of Lush and The Lush Lab. He first demonstrated his presenting skills in oktoLIVE! Season 7, a teen-targeted educational programme that was captured in front of a live audience. He later presented programmes like The 5 Show (Mediacorp Channel 5), Rollin’ Good Times (Mediacorp Channel 5), and Be Schooled (Starhub SuperSports).
Additionally, Benjamin is a co-founder, writer, director, and actor of the critically renowned YouTube comedy-sketch series The BenZi Project. In its first three months, the channel received over 1 million views and 30k subscribers.
As a supporter of youth and social causes, Benjamin has also been asked to speak at TEDxYouth@Singapore about how he overcame depression and anxiety disorders with synaesthesia. He is also the lead author of a spoken word project for the Singapore Association for Mental Health and is a member of the Somerset Belt Working Panel, a project of the Ministry of Culture, Community, and Youth that aims to support, collaborate, and help realise aspirations.
Benjamin has also started to creatively direct brand ads and various brand activities as evidence that some people truly do have it all. Since then, he has become renowned for his great aesthetic sense, sincere connection with his audience, and compassion in his work. His personality may be the only thing that can match his talent as one of Singapore’s fastest emerging stars.
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