Biographie
Tsu Shan Alana Chambers, has always been pronounced 'Suzanne' but her mother wanted her to be different and added a silent 'T' and a 'H' to her first name. She was born a Taurus in the Year of the Goat in Sydney, Australia.
Tsu Shan is the oldest child of Thong Sum Lee, a lawyer, and Kim Lee, a midwife. Both her parents are Malaysian Chinese, studied in London and later married there. Her parents later migrated to Australia where they had Tsu Shan and 4 years later, her brother Marcus Lee. When Tsu Shan was 7, they moved to Darwin, in the Northern Territory.
By the age of 12, Tsu Shan was a state representative tennis player but dropped it in high school where she later became ranked third in the Territory for her HSC. She found her love for volunteer work and the outdoors through the Duke of Edinburgh's Award and was later awarded the Gold Award by The Duke of Edinburgh in Alice Springs. Tsu Shan always wanted to study drama in high school but was never allowed. She was offered a place to study Medicine in each of the top universities around Australia as well as musical theatre. After a year long student exchange program in China, Tsu Shan chose neither and pursued Optometry instead.
She devoted her life to volunteering around the world, including Bangladesh with Rotary International and Chile with Raleigh International as well as helping indigenous children in regional Australia and the Paralympic Games in Sydney. Tsu Shan was later awarded the Northern Territory Young Achievers Awards 2003, Parmalat Community Service Award; 2002 Young Territorian of the Year for the Darwin Region and was Young Australian of the Year 2002 Semi Finalist for The Pacific Access Community Service Award.
Tsu Shan then married her high school friend Brian Chambers in Darwin in 2004 and travelling around the world no longer seemed appealing. After Tsu Shan completed a Master of Public Health and a Graduate Certificate in University Learning and Teaching, they moved to the Sunshine Coast and had three children, Vanessa, Bo and Jaime.
Tsu Shan was always passionate about women's health and wellbeing and opened up an integrative health centre for women called Yin Health. After 5 years of a lot of hard work, she was a Queensland finalist in the Telstra Business Awards, won the Sunshine Coast Outstanding Business Woman of the Year award and was on the front cover of Profile Magazine.
Her family then moved back to Sydney for Brian's work and she sold the business. It was only when her youngest child was 1 years old and she was trying to find something for her kids to do during the school holidays, that Tsu Shan stumbled onto the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). She auditioned for one of their 6 month programs, got in and reconnected with her love for acting and the arts.
Despite having young children and mortgages, Tsu Shan was determined to change her life around and work professionally as an actress. She fell into producing when she helped a writer pull together crew for a short film called Tragic Enough. It was about domestic violence and Tsu Shan believed it was an important story to tell. This film later won two awards at the World Film Awards. She then went onto write and/or produce 4 more short films and a web-series, each of them winning various accolades, including nominations for most Outstanding Drama, and her as most Outstanding Actress for her web-series.
After the suicide of her brother's deaf best friend in high school, Tsu Shan has always been passionate about supporting minority groups and to support those who are made to feel Other. Tsu Shan went to film school and completed a Graduate Certificate in Creative Producing at the Australian Film and Television Radio School (AFTRS). She was also selected as one of Screen Producer's Australia's "Ones to Watch".
Then, together with writer Ally Burnham, they developed their first feature film called Unsound (2020) about deaf culture and pride. It was one of the first Australian films to contain significant Auslan sign language and ended up being nominated for Best Indie Film at the AACTA awards (the Australian equivalent of the Oscars), won Best Australian Feature Film at the Melbourne Queer Film Festival and Best Fiction Feature at the ATOM Awards. Internationally, it was selected in competition for the UNICEF Award at the 32nd festival for Children and Youth in Vienna, the UNESCO-Gandhi Medal at the International Film Festival of India, received 2 nominations at the New Vision International Awards among others and has obtained distribution in multiple international territories including Fuse TV in the US.
Tsu Shan was recently elected to the Screen Producers Australia (SPA) Council, picked as one of the Producers on Inside Film (IF) Magazine's Rising Talent List 2023 and was included in the inaugural AA122 list - recognising Asian Australians who have had the most impact on Australian culture, society and institutions over the past year.
In 2022 Tsu Shan was selected for the AWG/Create NSW's First Break initiative. Her latest feature My Eyes (2024), which she co-wrote and is producing, obtained development support from VicScreen. She has also been selected to be on numerous industry committees, including the inaugural Diversity Justice Lens group for screen equity and inclusion and the AFTRS Alumni Advisory Group.
Tsu Shan continues to develop her slate across TV, Features and Online formats to create unique and bold stories with underlying social impact themes.
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