Anna Jobling has spent years building something most people can’t shake. Now, at 25, she’s done playing small—and done explaining herself.
On days off, Anna Jobling romanticises her life. She sleeps in. She makes herself a matcha (“I love tea”), tidies her space until it feels like a sanctuary, and then, finally, exhales. Maybe she takes an everything shower. Maybe she reads. Maybe she rewatches a favourite show, something easy and undemanding. The portrait that emerges is of a woman constructing, with great care, a life that can absorb the chaos of her career.
At 25, the Malaysian actress has spent nearly a decade making a name for herself with the kind of discipline and patience that the entertainment industry rarely rewards quickly—and often doesn’t acknowledge at all. As a teenager, Jobling attended modelling school—Amber Chia Academy helped develop Jobling’s early talent, paving the way for her success in competitions like Dewi Remaja—then acting school, turning up to every shoot as the youngest person on set. “I started from the bottom,” she says, matter-of-factly. “It hasn’t been easy, but I did the hard work. If I had to go through all of it again to get to where I am today, I would happily do it over.” It’s all been worth it. An award in Seoul honouring her as an Outstanding Asian Star for her role as Cahaya in the 2024 drama series ‘Hai Cinta, Dengarkanlah!’ A growing body of work across Malaysia and Indonesia. A fanbase she actively tends to; replying to messages, bowling with superfans, hosting buka puasa gatherings that blur the line between celebrity and friend. “I’m very, very close to them,” she says of her fans, and the warmth in her voice makes it ring true.
What she’s still learning—and she’ll be the first to admit it—is how to pause. “I’m always thinking, what’s next, what’s next,” she says. “I never really stopped to think of the days I prayed for what I have now.” There is something quietly moving about hearing it said that plainly: a person in the middle of a dream life, reminding herself to look up. She’s trying. She calls it, living in the moment. She says she’s getting better at it.
Ask what draws her to a script, and she answers immediately: “When I can’t stop reading it. When I need to know what happens next.” She has played ghosts with evident delight (she has, as she will tell you cheerfully, what people call a ‘ghost face’, and she considers this a compliment). She swam competitively as a teenager, so when she became a mermaid on screen for the film ‘Duyung: Legenda Aurora’, the tail fit. She wants, next, something physically demanding—an action role, a challenge she hasn’t yet had the chance to meet. “I haven’t done anything that’s really pushed me physically,” she says. “I’m ready for that.”
Jobling is thinking about the bigger picture of women in Southeast Asian film and television. She wants more diverse, nuanced characters, fewer of the fragile perempuan lemah archetypes that still dominate the landscape. “I love an independent woman who doesn’t let a man mess with her. We don’t see a lot of those in scripts,” she says. She’s worked with women directors and lights up describing the experience—”They’re so careful with their craft”—and would love more of those collaborations. “It’s a very male-dominated industry,” she concedes, then perks up. “But we’re getting there.”
Growing up in that industry required her to be sharper than the room expected. Her mother was a constant, watchful presence on set. Jobling developed her own instincts, a clear-eyed confidence in what she will and will not accept. “If someone says, for example, ‘You’ve gained weight,’ I’ll shut it down,” she says. “I’ll call you out.” The delivery is bright, almost breezy. It’s not a threat so much as a statement of fact about herself, one she has clearly long since stopped needing to justify. “I live my life for me. At the end of the day, no matter what you do, someone will always have a comment.”
I live my life for me. At the end of the day, no matter what you do, someone will always have a comment.
The philosophy extends to social media, which she navigates with a careful hand. Jobling knows her platform carries weight. “I’d never say, look at me as an example of how to live your life. I feel like you should never look at someone’s social media and think their lives are perfect. Behind the screens, we’re just normal people. We have feelings. We go through things that we don’t talk about.” She is protective of the gap between what she shares and who she actually is—not out of calculation, but self-preservation. “People don’t really know me,” she says. “I tend to not say things at all because I’m tired of getting my words twisted, or people taking things out of context and using them against me.” She pauses, then smiles. “As long as I’m not disturbing anybody, as long as I’m not harming anybody, then I feel like it’s nobody’s business what I do. I choose peace.”
When asked about her creative hopes for 2026, she laughs and goes quiet. She is, she explains, a firm believer in silent manifestation—the idea that saying it out loud turns it into a jinx, so she won’t give you the milestone. What she will give you is the feeling she’s chasing: genuine surprise at her own life, and gratitude—always gratitude. “If I don’t set expectations and I achieve something, I feel so grateful for it,” she says. “That’s a better feeling than being disappointed.”
It is, in its own way, the secret behind everything Jobling has built, brick-by-brick: an honest love of the work, a willingness to do it unglamorously for as long as it takes, and the presence of mind to look around, every now and then, and recognise how far she has come. Her career has been built on a philosophy she absorbed early: foundations first. “Someone once told me it’s like building a house,” she says. “If you want to last in the industry, you need to start with a good foundation, then you place your bricks, you add doors, windows, whatever else. Once it’s built, nobody can shake it.”
The house, as she would say, is standing. And the view from it is very good.
Photography: Weeyang
Videography: Noah Chin
Creative Direction & Styling: Joseph Cheng
Art Direction: Nadia Aswardy
Hair: Ckay Liow
Makeup: Cat Yong
Photography Assistants: Carl
Styling Assistants: Sarah Chong, Lorraine Chai, Maryssa Helmi
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