Nadya Hutagalung

Biography

Nadya Hutagalung's first modelling jobs in Tokyo came when she was twelve. She later remembered them as the start of a career that has now lasted more than thirty years.

She was born on 28 July 1974 in Sydney. Her father, an Indonesian of Batak origin, comes from Tarutung in northern Sumatra; her mother is Australian. She therefore holds two citizenships, Indonesian and Australian.

She began her modelling career in Tokyo, and at twenty-one, when MTV Asia started broadcasting from Singapore in 1995, she was among its first video jockeys (VJs). Later she hosted the programme Global Groove on American MTV. At the same time she appeared in cosmetics advertising, including Lux and Pond's Gold Radiance. In 1996 she was in the music video for the band Cool Colors' song “Tataplah”. Television brought her awards. In 1997 she won an Asian Television Awards prize as best light entertainment presenter. The magazine Asiaweek named her among “Asia's Leading Trendmakers”, alongside the Dalai Lama, Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-fat. In the same year the Singapore newspaper The New Paper named her its showbusiness personality of the year, and readers of the magazine Female voted her the most attractive woman in Singapore. In 2009 CNN included her in a list of the twenty most influential people in Singapore, and ELLE named her best TV host. In 2012 she received an award from the MNC Lifestyle channel and the SIP Fellow Award of the Singapore Innovation Park.

Her best-known television work is hosting and judging the first two cycles of Asia's Next Top Model, the Asian version of the modelling competition. Later she presented the programme Wondernesia (2015).

She has had few roles in film and television: the Indonesian TV drama “Dunia D” (2003), the Singaporean film “The Leap Years” (2008) and the Singaporean series “Zero Hero” (2011). In the documentary “Let Elephants Be Elephants” (2014) she spoke up for elephants. Indonesian comedians parodied her on the TV show Big Show on the channel TPI, with a character called Nadya Sule. Her interests go beyond the screen. She is also described as a painter, but I could not find details of her painting, so I will not judge it. Something more definite: she launched the jewellery line OSEL, a name that means “clear light” in Tibetan, and the jewellery is presented as sustainable. She is an ambassador of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and works extensively to protect orangutans and elephants. In 2018 her book “Walk With Me” appeared, about her career and environmental work; the second edition added a chapter on mental health. She lives in Singapore.