Sze Irene Ng (born July 28, 1974) is an American actress, teacher, banker and founder and director of Mencius Mandarin Preschool in Greenwich, Connecticut. She is best known for her role as Shelby Woo in The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo.
Ng was born July 28, 1974, in Penang, Malaysia. For the first five years of her life, she was raised by her maternal grandparents as her parents were at the United States for their higher studies.[1][2] She immigrated from Malaysia to Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1989, at age 15, with her parents and her sister and brother. Following immigration to the United States, her father worked as a general manager for a Chinese fire-resistant filing cabinets manufacturing factory while her mother worked as a nurse at a hospital in Allentown.[2] She attended Allentown's William Allen High School and in 1993, she and her sister graduated as valedictorians from high school.[3] At age 16, she was discovered by television agents when she won a Pennsylvania beauty contest.[4]
Ng's first acting role was in ABC soap opera All My Children in 1991, where she starred in 18 episodes.[5] In 1993, she starred in films The Joy Luck Club and Heaven & Earth.[6] Ng has guest starred on Law & Order and Teen Angel.[5] In 1996, she was cast as the main protagonist in the Nickelodeon TV series Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, reportedly making her at that time the second Asian American to star as title character in a TV series after Margaret Cho in the All-American Girl.[7][8] The show ran for three seasons till 1998.[1] In 1997, she took part in Nickelodeon game show Figure It Out.[9] Her last film role was in the 1999 film The Sterling Chase.[10] Following the start of the 21st century, Ng ended her entertainment career, and only had a minor role in an episode of season 19 of Law & Order in 2008 and episode of the fourth season of Showtime series The Affair in 2018.[1]
During her entertainment career in the 1990s, she began her studies at Harvard University and graduated with BA in economics in 1997, and was elected member of Phi Beta Kappa and was finalist for Rhodes Scholarship. She later received certification in childcare management at New York University and also Child Development Associate credential. Following her studies, she worked as a banker at Merrill Lynch for seven years and travelled frequently to China for business. In 2009, she founded the Mencius Mandarin Preschool in Greenwich, Connecticut and currently serves as the director of the school.[4][11]
In 2008, Ng married David Rosa and had two children, a son and daughter. The family currently resides in Greenwich.[2][12]