When I get the chance to meet with Anna Jobling on the set of our cover shoot, we’re on a bit of a time crunch. She’s dressed in Universal Traveller’s Ascend Fall/Winter 26/27 Ascend—crafted for winter travel and all things cold-weather in mind—and we’re working with blocks of ice that are being chipped down as we speak. The cool winter-white aesthetic suits her, adding a soft yet powerful edge to our shoot. At once Anna is the Ice Queen; frosty on the outside, a steely determination bubbling beneath the surface.
I had only ever seen Anna on screen or in pictures before, and I can say this: Anna has the kind of unreal beauty that’s all the more amplified in real life. She’s only 26 yet she has grown into her features beautifully, and with a delightfully deadpan humour to match. I tell her there’s even more to look forward to once she reaches her thirties, and she halts. “I thought you were younger than that,” she says. “You know what? It’s the Asian genetics. I have the white genetics, so I look older. I do hope I age gracefully.”
Anna began modelling as young as five years old, pausing once she started school to focus on it, working on being a competitive swimmer. “I thought that would be my path in life,” she tells me. “Because I also had a lot of stage fright in school. Like, if I had to like present, I would shake, so I’d have to do it after class instead. I started modelling again and doing television commercials (TVCs) when I was 15. Then I started acting when I was 18 or 19, and it kind of just snowballed from there.”
As she talks, I can’t help but notice that there’s a sense of taking charge, or control, of her own life, a sense of ambition and drive—making her a true Leo. “I’m the type of person where I’m never satisfied with what I do,” Anna shares. “I’m always looking to see, okay, what’s next? What can I do next? I like to challenge myself. Even though it might feel uncomfortable at first, but I know that if I don’t try, I’ll never know. I feel like I live my life as if I don’t want to regret anything. That’s the kind of person that I am.”
It’s perhaps this same ambition that pushed Anna to make her big break in the local acting scene. It had been understandably difficult when she first started out—she’d looked different, and she had a very distinct accent. “I went to an international school and I didn’t have a lot of Malay friends; plus, I wasn’t really familiar with the culture and I didn’t speak the language very well,” she opens up. “When I first started acting, I really couldn’t speak [Malay]. Maybe like 10%. I could understand you, but I couldn’t, like, converse with you. It was really bad, I was like, ‘Sah-yeah nak perg-gee.’ Really, really bad. And my few roles in the beginning were like, ‘She’s half-mixed, just came back to Malaysia.’ So I had my accent, it became, like, an excuse. But I didn’t want to be labelled as the stereotypical ‘half-white girl with the accent’. So I was like, ‘You know what? I’m gonna try to avoid speaking English as much as I can.’”
Her mother was the one who taught her Malay, and she eventually improved her cadence and inflection. “I would read newspapers and magazines, and watch shows,” she recounts. “And if I didn’t understand, I would d have to ask [my mum]. It really helped on set as well because I would have to read the scripts, and would really push myself to not have the accent. It took a long time. I mean, sometimes even now I’m kind of like, ‘Do I still say it like that? If I do, just let me know.’ But it’s always a learning process, I feel.”
After her stint with Dewi Remaja back in 2019, she had one foot in the door and got started on building her résumé with supporting roles in films and TV dramas. “I went to a lot of classes,” she shares. “I did theatre, I did classes in Indonesia as well. I still go to classes here. For me, there’s never enough learning, especially when it comes to being an actress. There’s always so much to learn, especially on set with senior actors and directors.”
Then in 2022, Melur Untuk Firdaus became Anna’s golden goose. She was 21, starring alongside Meerqeen in a rom-com drama that would eventually change her whole outlook on fame and had her completely locked into her acting career. “It kind of went super viral in Indonesia, and I think it really just boosted my name,” she says of the show. “It was kind of an overnight shift and it just completely changed my life. And I didn’t expect that, because I feel like every time I have an expectation towards something, it never reaches my expectations. So with that one, I just kind of had fun, you know, I didn’t take it too seriously. And it wasn’t a heavy show, it was just, like, a rom-com. But yeah, that really changed my life and people started noticing me. That’s how I started to get into acting in Indonesia as well.”
The show became one of those rare instances that was granted a second season, and eventually Anna and Meerqeen developed their own fan base. “We would arrive at the airport in Jakarta and there would be crowds,” she says with a laugh. “I felt like a K-pop star. You know, even now, people would still refer to me as the character I played, or comment something like, ‘Hi Melur!’”
Anna went on to star in four Indonesian horror films—Lembayung and Laut Tengah in 2024, then Sukma and Buhul: Simpul Kematian the following year—and she was fondly dubbed our local ‘scream queen’. “Not a lot of actors get the opportunity to go there,” she says, grateful for her opportunities. “Every time I go there, I’m like, ‘Why don’t you open up more doors for us here?’ But the thing is, I don’t know, I feel like it’s also based on rezeki, you know. For me, I think it’s really just based on rezeki and effort and hard work. And whenever I’m there, I try to make Malaysia proud, because I’m representing our country. I just want to leave a good impression, you know. When the audience watches me, I want to make it worth their while.”
Because of how much—and just how quickly—she’s grown, the one thing Anna is still learning to come to terms with her lack of privacy. She considers herself a pretty private reason, not loving posting on social media all that much, and typically not giving too much care about the way she looked. But nowadays, she can’t but feel like she’s being watched wherever she goes. “But at the same time I’m like, ‘No, it’s all in your head.’ And also, this is my job. My job is to get judged. But yeah, I still struggle with that sometimes. Sometimes I just avoid going out completely because I just feel safe at home. I want to be in my sweats and be, like, a mess. I think that was the struggle for me, to shift my whole mindset, you know, sacrificing certain things and really committing my whole life to that.” She’s matured a lot from that, from having to deal with criticism, firmly stating that “if you don’t like me, then you don’t like me. I don’t know you, so I feel like your opinion doesn’t matter to me.”
As she dives into the heavier stuff these days, Anna is also learning to balance her own emotions with her work ones. “I think roles that require me to be very, very emotional,” she says, when I ask her about the kind of roles that she finds most challenging. “Because I think I’ve kind of fine-tuned my brain to heal in a way. I feel like I’ve gone through a lot but I don’t really talk about them publicly, so no one would’ve ever guessed I went through that. Because I don’t want people to perceive me in a way that’s, like, you know, different than what I want them to see me as.” (On top of being a Leo, she’s also a self-proclaimed Type A.)
“So, I feel like when I have to like unlock that side of me again,” she goes on, talking about getting into a heavy role, “and then I have to try and feel everything again. It’s very hard for me because I feel like I’m triggering holes; things I felt in the past, and then trying to, like, snap out of it. But I’m like, ‘Okay, no, this is just work.’ You have to make sure that you go home every day not carrying your character, or carrying all these emotions on set that you have today and just learn to turn it on and off. And it’s not all filmed in order. So one day I’m like laughing, then the next scene I’m like bawling my eyes out because Mom or Dad died, and the next scene is romantic, and it’s like, I’m going crazy here! But you know what? That’s what I love about the job as well, because you get to explore sides of yourself that you don’t think maybe you’ve experienced, so you get to try and imagine what it would feel like. That’s the best part of the job, I guess.”
There’s a kind of weary, almost cynical tone in the way Anna speaks about the job—as so many do in the entertainment world—and it’s clear that she’s had to go through a lot to get to where she is today. There are equal parts gratitude and deep understanding in what she does, and she takes both with her heart full. “I love being able to connect with people, or having people look at me in my role and kind of relating to it, or even falling in love with my character,” she muses. “And I love having a fan base that really supports everything that I do, no matter what it is. I feel like it’s validating. I’m really blessed to have such a big fan base, not just here, but in Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, all over. I think that’s one of the best parts, and also being able to travel and meeting new people, having different connections. I don’t know, maybe because when I was little, I used to watch these models and actors and think, ‘Oh, that is something I will never do. That’s something that’s just like a dream.’ And then suddenly being put into it, it’s kind of like, ‘Oh, this is actually my reality.’
“I wake up every morning feeling super blessed,” she continues. “Even though I do get tired, but it’s like… okay, this is something Taylor Swift said. She said, ‘I’m tired, but I’m not tired of it.’ I think that’s just my favorite part, being able to just do my dream job, you know. I feel like not a lot of people do what they love, and I get to do that. So I’m always really grateful for that. I think just having a strong mentality is important in itself, because being in this industry is not for the weak. In any sort of work, there’s always going to be some sort of level of toxicity. Just having a good backbone, a good support system, a close group of people who really support you… I think that’s really, really important.”
editor-in-chief MARTIN TEO | creative direction ERVIN TAN | interview PUTERI YASMIN SURAYA | editorial team MALLIE MARAN | photography CHUAN LOOI | photography assistant EUGENE TEOH & MENG | videography POR JIA JUN | producer SHU HANN | production assistant CHIA KE XIN | makeup RACHEL @PLIKAMAKEUP | hair CODY CHUA | styled by ERVIN TAN | styling assistant ANIQ AKMAL & LI FANG | wardrobe UNIVERSAL TRAVELLER
Find out more about ANNA JOBLING in the latest issue of LSA Digital Cover Vol. 049 HERE.
Note : The information in this article is accurate as of the date of publication.
