By Sylvia Toh Paik Choo

IF his last two tiger years are a measure, even bigger and better things await the multi-talented Mr Glen Goei. He is an actor, a director, a producer and a writer all rolled into one. He will be 48 in Dec 2010.

"In 1986, at 24, I graduated from Cambridge University (MA History). I grew up. I auditioned for M Butterfly the play, and in 1998, when I was 36, I made Forever Fever, which was picked up by Miramax," he says.

He got to play M Butterfly and Miramax signed him for a three-picture deal.

In the in-between years, Goei has been no slouch either.

He has trodden the boards 18 times, from acting in M Butterfly in London's West End in 1989 to directing The Importance of Being Earnest in Singapore last year.

Film and television and project design (creative director Singapore Pavilion World Expo Japan) and large scale performances like the National Day Parade (from 2003 to 2006) all add to a well-pencilled diary since the youngest of seven children left Anglo Chinese School in 1980.

The hyperactive Goei found time to welcome us to his home, an architect's retro dream made concrete in Dalvey Road.

Looking like a location home for a Hollywood picture of the 50s and 60s, you rather expect Doris Day and Rock Hudson to greet you with a highball glass while a Dean Martin song grooves on the gramophone.

Goei bouces in like a tiger cub with a Coca-Cola Zero. These big cats are vain, he prides himself on not sporting a belly.

He says of the house: "I found it on the Net," and in the proverbial parlance of his Chinese animal sign, he pounced on it.

"I prefer to rent because I have no kids to leave it to," admits the bachelor. "Also it means I am truly free." Uncaged.

Like a tiger to roam, turn on the turf, lie down till the next prowl?

Goei confesses he's not exactly keyed up on the characteristics of the Tiger in the Chinese zodiac. His western horoscopic sign is Sagittarius-Capricorn. He understands the principles behind feng-shui but does not practise them. And he brooks no superstitions.

"Take astrology too seriously, that's fortune- telling.

"I don't necessarily believe, in one or the other, but tend to temper the Tiger with Sagittarius-Capricorn."

Balance is his belief. "Rather than trying to change something, find a balance, go with intuition and common sense."

It was gut-feel that propelled him in the direction of theatre.

"The first play I saw was Emily of Emerald Hill, and I recognised my calling was theatre; together with film, it's a powerful medium."

Goei's medium is the performing arts, don't look to him changing his stripes, not when there he had won awards for his forte - National Youth Award Excellence Contribution to the Arts (Singapore) and a nomination and a win from the UK, where he lived close to 20 years.

He came home in 2000. "I tend to do things in blocks of a decade!" The next decade for him is, he says, "a blank canvas".

He offers: "I think it's the female tiger that's fierce; male tigers are lazy and lie around."

Within his family of parents, three brothers and three sisters, there's a veritable farmyard of zodiac animals.

"Oh, pigs and dogs and goats and ox."

That's the ideal combination for a family, according to Chinese lunar calendar legends.

"Really? Someone once told me I may not have realised it but my family are my biggest supporters," he says.

This Year of the Tiger, Goei wants to take off, not take off on travel, but time out for himself. Hence the clean canvas.

"There is the artist always battling inside me, I don't know what the year holds.

"I am slightly ADD and OCD, so I will want something to do."

So he's not one to rest on the hind legs without honing the talons then.

"You know, Capricorn's a goat. I need mountains to scale."

There's an anecdotal image, big pussycat chasing goat up a cliff's edge.

Goei's second film, The Blue Mansion, has done the Pusan and Tokyo international film festival circuits, and it will do Hong Kong as well.

He is in talks to remake his first movie Forever Fever in Japan.

There's Boeing Boeing to direct for Wild Rice where he is the co-artistic director.

"My greatest luxury is time, time to read, and get into books."

What's the most savage review you've read on GG?

"I don't read reviews, the honest opinions of friends and family are what counts."

And the wildest thing you've done that's printable?

"Dancing naked in the kitchen."

Jamie Oliver, be scared.