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Smile (actress)

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Smile
စမိုင်းလ်
Smile in 2019
Born
Than Thar Htoo

(1986-06-22) 22 June 1986 (age 38)
NationalityBurmese
Other namesSmile Maung
Alma materUxbridge College
Occupation(s)Actress, model, singer, writer, businesswoman
Years active1998–present
Height5 ft 6 in (1.68 m)
Musical career
GenresPop rock
InstrumentVocals
Years active2012–present

Smile (Burmese: စမိုင်းလ်; born Than Thar Htoo on 22 June 1986), also known as Smile Maung, is a Burmese actress, singer, former model, writer and businesswoman.[1] She was one of the most popular models around the 2000s.[2] Throughout her career, she has acted in over 50 films.[3]

Early life and education

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Smile was born on 22 June 1986 in Yangon, Myanmar into the film production family. She is the granddaughter of famous actress Khin Lay Swe.[4] She is the youngest daughter of two siblings, having an elder sister. She went to study in London at Uxbridge College.[5]

Career

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Smile began her modeling career in 1998 at the age of 12. She appeared on magazine covers and worked as a commercial model, which drew attention from the film industry. Her work in modeling and commercial acting led to roles in TV commercials and DVD productions. By the age of 16, she had transitioned to acting, making her film debut in A Chit The Laypyay (Love is Breeze), where she starred alongside Dwe and Eaindra Kyaw Zin.[6]

In 2002, she starred in the big-screen film Kyar Mee Swal Ko Ko Myauk Muu Lae Ma Ma, where she played the main role with Wai Lu Kyaw and Nandar Hlaing. After relocating to England in 2003, she made a conscious decision to step away from her film career following her marriage and the arrival of her children. As a result, she completely withdrew from the industry.[7]

After a decade-long absence from the public eye, Smile made a comeback in 2012, embarking on a music career. On October 15, 2013, she successfully launched her debut solo album titled "New Me", marking a significant milestone in her music career.[2] In 2017, she starred in 4 films, including Gayat Tway Par Hal.[8]

On February 10, 2019, she published her biography book titled "Sharing Is Caring", which delves into the topics of body shaming and fitness.[9][10] From 2000 to present, she has acted in more than 50 video/films.

Personal life

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Smile married Pyae Maung, a golfer who played for the Myanmar National Golf Team. Their careers evolved from the arts and sports to the telecom industry in 2006 with what started as a calling card business based in London. In 2012, they founded VMG Telecoms and launched VoIP application Ytalk.[11] Under the names of Smile Empire and Smile Online Cinema, their businesses have evolved to the realms of digital content partnerships, mobile payment apps, entertainment, gaming, and hospitality.[12]

Smile also owns Simile Hotel in Pyin Oo Lwin, and Smile Mart in Yangon. However, their main business source is unknown.[13]

In August 2022, the couple purchased a mansion owned by American YouTuber Jeffree Star, which was worth US$16.7 million.[14]

They have two daughters, Su Nadi Maung and Su Yati Maung.[15] Her eldest daughter, Su Nadi Maung (Portia) is a model.[16]

Political activities

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Smile joined the campaign supporting Aung San Suu Kyi's defense of Myanmar against genocide charges related to the Rohingya crisis at the UN's top court in The Hague in December 2019.[17]

In the aftermath of the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, she participated in the early anti-junta movements and protests.[18] She donated 100,000 Kyat to each of the ten protesters who fell during the crackdown on anti-junta movements in Mandalay.[19]

On 14 March 2021, Smile faced accusations from an anti-junta group of being involved in arms trafficking for the military junta, leading to a boycott call against her. However, she denied all the accusations, humorously clarifying that she only had a "mango gun" (a traditional food). She added, "If I made a profit from selling weapons and drugs that can kill others, may everything I eat turn to poison and lead to my death".[20][21]

On 10 February 2021, she donated all the food from her Smile Mart to the protesters on the streets.[22] She donated snacks carried by a car full to the anti-junta protestors in Yangon.[23] She also donated helmets, goggles, and fire extinguishers to the protesters on the frontline.[24][25]

Philanthropy

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Smile founded PSPC Foundation in California. She became a board member of the White Ribbon USA, a non-profit organization that she regularly donates to. She faced severe criticism for donating 5,000,000 Kyat (equivalent to USD 1,050) to the Myitkyina flood in July 2024, while simultaneously donating $10,000 to the LGBT community in the United States. This sparked anger among the residents of Myitkyina, who requested a refund of the donation, stating they did not want her money. Later, Smile posted on her Facebook page expressing anger over the criticism of her donation and stated that she will never donate to Myanmar again.[26]

Filmography

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Film (Cinema)

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  • A Chit The Lay Pyay (အချစ်သည်လေပြေ) (2002)
  • Kyar Mee Swal Ko Ko Myauk Muu Lae Ma Ma (ကျားမှီးဆွဲကိုကို မျောက်မူးလဲမမ) (2002)
  • Gayat Tway Par Hal (ဂယက်တွေပါဟယ်) (2017)

Film

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(Over 50 films)

Discography

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Solo albums

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  • New Me (2013)

Books

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  • Sharing Is Caring (2019)

References

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  1. ^ "Entrepreneurs Smile and Pyae Maung: Eastern Leadership Principles Lead to Success". The Art Insider. 1 December 2023.
  2. ^ a b Aung, Nandar (19 January 2014). "Former model showcases singing chops". The Myanmar Times.
  3. ^ "စမိုင်းရဲ့ ပွဲဦးထွက်အယ်လ်ဘမ် New Me". The Myanmar Times (in Burmese). 12 March 2014.
  4. ^ "မြေးဖွားနှစ်ယောက်အချစ်ပိုနေကြတဲ့ ဒေါ်ခင်လေးဆွေနှင့် စမိုင်းလ်". Myanmarload (in Burmese). 13 November 2018.
  5. ^ "သရုပ်ဆောင်စမိုင်းလ်နှင့် တွေ့ဆုံခြင်း". Eleven Media Group (in Burmese). 13 February 2019.
  6. ^ "စမိုင်းလ်နဲ့ တွေ့ဆုံခြင်း". The Voice Weekly (in Burmese). 21 February 2019.
  7. ^ Win, Leanne (23 April 2018). "သမီးတွေရဲ့ ဝါသနာအကြောင်း စမိုင်းပြောပြ". Popular News Journal (in Burmese).
  8. ^ "ပွဲဦးထွက် ဇာတ်ကားကြီး ပြန်လည်ရိုက်ကူးလာတဲ့ စမိုင်း". Kumudra (in Burmese). 13 October 2017.[dead link]
  9. ^ "ခန္ဓာကိုယ်ဝတဲ့ အမျိုးသမီးများ စိတ်ဓာတ်မကျသွားဖို့ ပြောတဲ့ စမိုင်းလ်". The Irrawaddy (in Burmese). 11 February 2019.
  10. ^ "သရုပ်ဆောင် စမိုင်း ရေးသားသည့် Sharing is Caring စာအုပ် မိတ်ဆက်". Myanmar Digital News (in Burmese). 20 February 2019.
  11. ^ "ဦးဆောင်သူ အမျိုးသမီးတွေဆွေးနွေးကျမယ့် Power Women ပွဲမှာ ပါဝင်မယ့် စမိုင်းလ်". Cele Gaber (in Burmese). 8 August 2019.
  12. ^ Suhrawardi, Rebecca. "Smile And Pyae Maung Share The Secrets Of Lotus Silk, One Of The World's Most Expensive Fabrics". Forbes.
  13. ^ "သရုပ်ဆောင် စမိုင်းလ်တို့ဇနီးမောင်နှံ အမေရိကန်ရှိ ဇိမ်ခံနေအိမ်တစ်လုံးကို ဒေါ်လာ ၁၆ သန်းကျော်ပေးဝယ်". LuduNwayOo (in Burmese). 9 August 2022.
  14. ^ "Myanmar couple bought an American YouTuber's home in California". Eleven Media Group.
  15. ^ "Helicopter နဲ့ မင်္ဂလာပြန်ဆောင်ခဲ့တဲ့ စမိုင်းလ်တို့ ဇနီးမောင်နှံ". Popular News Journal (in Burmese). 26 June 2017.
  16. ^ "အမိုက်စား Pose တွေ ဆွဲဆောင်မှု ရှိရှိလှနေတဲ့ စမိုင်းလ် သမီးလေး Portia (ပေါ်ရှာ)". Momolay (in Burmese). 15 October 2019.
  17. ^ "Suu Kyi fans join VIP tours for genocide trial". The ASEAN Post. 29 December 2016.
  18. ^ "ရန်ကုန်မြို့ရဲ့အချက်အချာနေရာဖြစ်တဲ့ ဆူးလေကိုသွားပြီး လူထုလှုပ်ရှားမှုမှာ တက်တက်ကြွကြွပါဝင်နေခဲ့တဲ့ စမိုင်းလ်ရဲ့သမီးလေး၂ယောက်". Myanmarload (in Burmese). 14 February 2021.
  19. ^ "မန္တလေးမြို့က လူထုလှုပ်ရှားမှုမှာ ကျဆုံးခဲ့ရတဲ့ အာဇာနည်သူရဲကောင်းတွေအတွက် တစ်ဦးကို ငွေကျပ် ၁၀သိန်းစီ လှူဒါန်းခဲ့တဲ့ စမိုင်းလ်". Myanmarload (in Burmese). 5 March 2021.
  20. ^ "အခုလိုအချိန်မျိုးမှာ သတင်းမှားတွေထွက်ပေါ်နေတာကြောင့် ပြည်သူတွေအထင်မလွဲဖို့အတွက် ပြတ်ပြတ်သားသား ဖြေရှင်းလိုက်တဲ့ စမိုင်းလ်". Myanmarload (in Burmese). 14 March 2021.
  21. ^ "အမေရိကန်တွင် ထင်ရှားသည့် အလှကုန်လုပ်ငန်းရှင်တစ်ဦး၏ အမေရိကန်ဒေါ်လာ (၁၆)သန်းကျော်တန် စံအိမ်ကြီးကို မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှ သရုပ်ဆောင် စမိုင်းလ်တို့စုံတွဲက ဝယ်ယူ". Tachileik News Agency (in Burmese). 9 August 2022. ၎င်းတို့သည် အာဏာသိမ်းစစ်တပ်နှင့်စပ်နွယ်သလို လက်နက်မှောင်ခိုပြုလုပ်နေသူများဖြစ်ကြောင်း မှတ်ချက်များစွာ ရေးသားထားသည်ကိုလည်း တွေ့ရသည်။
  22. ^ "သူမရဲ့ Smile Mart က စားစရာတွေအားလုံးကို လမ်းပေါ်ထွက်သူရဲကောင်းတွေအတွက်လှူဒါန်းပြီး တစ်တပ်တစ်အားပါဝင်အားဖြည့်နေတဲ့ စမိုင်းလ်". Myanmarload (in Burmese). 10 February 2021.
  23. ^ "ကားတစ်စီးလုံးအပြည့် မုန့်တွေတင်ကာ လူထုလှုပ်ရှားမှုပြုလုပ်နေတဲ့ ရန်ကုန်မြို့က ပြည်သူတွေကို အလှူပြုနေခဲ့တဲ့ စမိုင်းလ်". Myanmarload (in Burmese). 20 February 2021.
  24. ^ "အဖက်ဖက်က ကျပ်တည်းနေတဲ့အချိန်လေးမှာ အိမ်ထောင်စု (၅၅၀)အတွက် ကြည်နူးပီတိဖြစ်စရာအလှူလေးကို ထပ်မံပြုလုပ်ခဲ့တဲ့ စမိုင်းလ်". Myanmarload (in Burmese). 18 February 2021.
  25. ^ "သူတို့ဇနီးမောင်နှံရဲ့ Anniversary နေ့လေးမှာ လှုပ်ရှားမှုပြုလုပ်နေတဲ့ပြည်သူတွေကို လိုအပ်တဲ့ပစ္စည်းတွေနဲ့နှင်းဆီပန်းလေးတွေ ဝေခဲ့တဲ့ စမိုင်းလ်". Myanmarload (in Burmese). 14 February 2021.
  26. ^ "မြစ်ကြီးနားရေဘေးအတွက် သိန်း ၅၀ ပဲ လှူလို့ ဝေဖန်ခံနေရတဲ့ စမိုင်းလ်". Daily Brief News (in Burmese). 5 July 2024.