SINGAPORE, Dec 4 — You could say that 2015 has been quite a year for actress Nadiah M Din.

At least, if you look at her work rate. For a start, she was featured in three films this year.

She starred alongside Anna Jimskaya and Samantha Castillo in the Italian comedy film, Le Badanti (The Carers), which premiered in Cannes in May.

The way she tells it, Nadiah got the job through a mixture of having good luck and being a good storyteller: She did a Skype interview with the director, Marco Pollini, and told him that she could speak a little Italian. In actual fact, “I had no idea how to speak Italian”, she confessed.

In order to secure the gig for Le Badanti, she learnt short greetings and phrases from Google Translate only moments before her interview with Pollini.

Prior to filming, Nadiah learnt her script phonetically and had it translated so that she could more or less understand what her character was saying. “I only had two weeks to learn my text before I flew off to start filming. So when I was filming, I delivered those lines, but at least I knew what the meaning was in my heart,” she said.

“It’s like, I don’t know how to speak Mandarin, but I know that ‘ni hao ma’ means ‘how are you’. So the whole movie was a bit like that — I don’t know how to speak the language, but I know what it means.”

Her versatility isn’t restricted to languages: She was also featured singing in Eric Khoo’s short film segment for the movie omnibus, 7 Letters, when it opened in July, and a few months later, she got to show off her dancing chops in the Malay movie musical Sinaran, which ended its run over the weekend.

“It has been interesting because in 7 Letters I got to sing,” said Nadiah.

“I don’t get to the sing (in Sinaran) because they used another singer (to dub the singing voice). But I got to dance a lot. There were some scenes where I got to show my moves. During the song Sinaran, there’s a solo moment for me — all 24 seconds of it — so I think I’ve managed to show a bit of my skills this year!”

The toughest things about filming Sinaran, the 25-year-old said, was having to maintain her energy levels and getting the dance steps right. It didn’t help that her character, Nurul, was a dance choreographer.

“The dance steps were really very technical and you had to be on-point all the time,” said Nadiah. “On top of that, the choreographer was very strict and very hardworking. So we all felt bad when we didn’t deliver.

“The other challenge was making sure that my energy levels were always at 110 per cent for this show … We had to ensure that for every take we did, we had to keep the same energy levels, because when the director goes to the edit, our expressions in all the shots have to be the same.”

Nadiah was determined to be convincing as a dancer on screen. So, she did what any kiasu Singaporean would: She would come in earlier to rehearse by herself.

“I was so pressured. The (other cast members) were school and professional dancers. I can dance a bit — but I’m not a trained dancer. So when I saw them doing their moves I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, I’d better train three times as hard as those guys’. So every time we had rehearsals, I would arrive one hour earlier to train on my own … so that when I got to class I would be on par with the rest of them.”

Sinaran may have ended its run, but Nadiah’s busy year is far from over. A day after we finished the interview, she was off to several places in Malaysia — Kuala Lumpur, Perak and Langkawi — to take part in a programme for Tourism Malaysia, where she and her fellow celebrities have to go on a “celebrity quest” and do challenges at each stop.

She’s also started working on a new Channel 5 television series called Baby Bump (no prizes for guessing what that’s all about) and she does hosting duties for a new talk show on the Suria channel, which looks at gender issues faced by men and women, she said. “It’s quite a fun show where we ask questions like, are men really insensitive; or why do women love to shop?”

So what is the best thing about being Nadiah M Din this year? “I don’t know. The best thing would probably be that I’m a happy-go-lucky person. I think I am a very open and easy-going girl. I could talk to strangers for hours!” she chirped.

And is there a worst thing? 

“The worst thing could be my cravings for food! But that’s a good thing, right? I love salmon and cheese, I’m a huge fan of Japanese cuisine … and, of course, my mum’s nasi lemak. That’s the most important one!” — TODAY