It’s that time of the year again to cast our votes for our favourite stars. Just as we thought competition was fierce last year, when a total of 75 male and female artistes were nominated for the Top 10 Most Popular Male and Top 10 Most Popular Female category, this year’s popularity race is even more heated with a whopping 94 nominees.
The Most Popular nominees list, released today (Mar 18), revealed the 46 female and 48 male artistes in the running. We counted 30 DJs and 64 actors and actresses in the combined list.
Besides usual names in the Top 10 Females nominees list like Carrie Wong, Hong Ling, and Yvonne Lim (who is up for her final Top 10 award), this year sees the inclusion of Taiwanese host Matilda Tao.
If you haven’t heard, Matilda, who now lives in Singapore with her 15-year-old son, hosts The Matilda Show on LOVE 972 on weekdays. She made the list of nominees because she hosted last year’s Star Awards.
Another surprise nom is Korean actor Kim Jae Hoon, whom you may remember from the Rui En romance-fantasy drama Oppa Saranghae!. Will Oppa be flying to Singapore for the Star Awards?
Frequent Top 10 winners Paige Chua and Xu Bin, on the other hand, are not in contention as they were not involved in any projects which aired last year. Jin Yinji and Aileen Tan, who are both nominated for Best Supporting Actress, are also missing from the popularity noms.
According to the eligibility criteria, nominees in the Top 10 categories have to meet at least one of the following criteria:
- Have a lead role or be a main host in at least one eligible programme; or
- Play a supporting role or be an episodic host (for video) or co-host (for audio) in a) at least 3 eligible programmes, or b) at least 30 episodes in total across all eligible programmes
More details on the eligibility and judging criteria can be found here.
A total of 42 artistes who have been in showbiz for five or fewer years are included in the Most Popular Rising Stars category. Only three will win the award. Last year’s Most Popular Stars were Ayden Sng, Richie Koh and Gao Meigui.
While Richie and Meigui have graduated to the Most Popular Artiste category, Ayden is still in contention for a Most Popular Rising Star award.
This year will also see Ann Kok and Jesseca Liu go on stage to recieve their All-Time Favourite Artiste awards after picking up their 10th popularity award last year.
The MyPICK! awards, which include Favourite CP and Most Hated Villain are also up for grabs that night.
Scroll down to see who made the nominees list for Top 10 Most Popular Female, Top 10 Most Popular Male, Most Popular Rising Stars, and MyPICK! Awards.
You can also check out the nominees for performance categories here.