Regine Velasquez Happy, Blessed and Complete
by Ruben M. Cruz Jr.
Phil. Daily Inquirer 2.9.03

Concept of celebrity


OUR culture is obsessed by the concept of celebrity. How else can one explain the plague of publicity that descends on actors, singers and other public figures when they make appearances, or the popularity of gossip magazines and TV shows?

Celebrities are like royalty-glamorous and untouchable, they become objects of unreasonable adulation.

But there are real people behind the luminous images we see on multiplex screens, TV, wall-size posters and billboards.

These are the ones we want to know -- or the ones we think we want to know, since, as in everything else in reality, the real lives of these people we idolize might often fall short of our expectations.

In any case, a bustling movie set, with its whole caboose of distractions, is not the best place to interview celebrity artists, not when you intend to ask them questions that you hope would lead to moments of silence, the kind of silence you get when truths are about to be told.

It's hard to imagine how such revelations could be gotten here, among crew members and filmmakers, amid all the work that needs to be done to create the illusions that motion pictures peddle to hope-hungry masses. This is the world of stars-more surreal than anything you've ever seen in films depicting the world of stars.

But I was being presumptuous. Because, to begin with, even in a less busy, more ponderous and playful atmosphere, I might not have the questions that would induce the moments of silence and truths that I spoke of. And, as I would find out later, even if I did have those questions, Regine Velasquez is not the celebrity upon whom those questions would work.

I would have loved to see Regine in a moment of diva pique, to hear her in a forlorn voice talk about how every facet of her life is splashed around like entertainment. I imagined myself nodding and showing sympathy for the public scrutiny that has made her even more incandescent and out of reach. But such was not to happen. Regine is not a wild, unreal creature in need of taming and realness. On the contrary, she was as real as she could get, considering that she had to talk to a stranger, in between takes, a stranger who asked questions that had nothing to do with the movie she's doing ("Pangarap Kong Ibigin Ka" with Christopher De Leon) or the concert she's promoting ("Songbird sings Legrand," at the PICC on the Feb. 14, 15 and 16).

Regine rises from her chair after the nth take of a particular scene. For a moment before we were introduced, I thought I saw a look that seemed to say, "Oh no, not another interview."

"Tired?" I asked. "No, it's okay," she replies smiling instantly.

Pleasantries

She excuses herself to change for another scene and manages more than a modicum of grace and luminescence as she exchanges pleasantries with some of the film crew along the way.

I know stars like Regine are required to turn on the wattage that makes people melt in their presence, but a member of the crew swears her niceness is genuine. Later, Regine herself would say that she makes a conscious effort to be nice to everybody all the time.

"I would always be asked that question: How do you want to be remembered? And I used to give those standards answers like, 'a performer who gives it everything she's got,' 'a great singer' or whatever. But, really, I just want to be remembered as a nice person. I make quite an effort to be one," she says.

"The fame thing isn't really real," Julia Roberts' character, Anna Scott, said in the film "Notting Hill," and she may have been right.

Regine, if she was not popular, could have been just a girl, one who's comfortable with herself, a pleasure to talk to, even if we only talked for a while.

She's a completely ordinary mortal who is perhaps better at being diffident, abashed and self-effacing than most of us. And unlike Anna Scott or Francine, her character in that movie she did with Robin Padilla ("Kailangan Ko'y Ikaw"), she doesn't think fame has been a handicap to her personal happiness. It hasn't been the corrupting force that has made a lot of other celebrities miserable. She actually likes being the Regine Velasquez she is now.

"I'm very contented with my life. It could be better, but I don't think I have the right to complain. Ever since I was a little girl, I have always wanted to be a singer. Maybe I didn't dream about being an actor, but I always wanted to be a performer. I wanted to make albums and do concerts," she said. "Everything I dreamed of, I got them all. Of course, I had to work very hard to get them, but I got them."

I asked her: "Has there ever been a time you thought you're in the wrong business? Do you ever miss anything about being anonymous?

"I don't want to be anyone else. I feel really blessed living this life," she says. "You know what, people say this job is very hard, and it is. But in any job you have to work hard to achieve whatever it is that you want. This job is relatively easy. Sure mahirap siya because of the schedule, but I would not exchange it for anything. Because of this business I was able to help my family, napagtapos ko sa pag-aaral yung mga kapatid ko, which I consider a great achievement, and best of all, I'm being paid for something I love to do!"

It's hard to argue with success, but still, I wondered, shall I take her word more or less at face value or is she just turning on that wattage again? Her life surely can't be without its quibbles.

Regine would admit that she has some, but they turn out to be quibbles that one would most likely hear from just about any busy body, not just from a superstar.

For instance, she rues about not having the time to watch the films that she'd really like to watch on the big screen, like "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers." She tells me the last movie she saw in a theater was "A Walk To Remember," where she cried along with most of the people in the audience.

She also can't remember the last time she dated and says it would be nice if she could do so this year. She says she'd like to have a boyfriend, but even when she macroscopically grapples with the problem of love, she sounds very "un-movie-like."

She's not waiting for a prince charming to save her from anything.

"I feel I'm complete. And I'm flattered when people say that I don't seem to need a man to make me happy because that's true. I'm already happy. I don't need a partner to make me happy. I should be happy. I should be complete. When I get a partner he's not going to be able to fill up what's missing in me because, that's me," she says. "Sometimes, you don't even know what's missing in you. You yourself have to figure it out and make yourself whole, not someone else!"

"If somebody interesting comes along, he'll just add new colors to my life. I've always thought like that. I don't want to settle for just anyone. I won't go into a relationship just for the sake of having a boyfriend. I want to really be in love. The guy doesn't even have to love me back. All I'd care about is that I love him," she adds, then jokes that her last sentence would probably encourage more than a few callers.

Just Regine

I asked her what she would do if she found out she only had a few days to live. She said she would eat everything, find a partner to go dancing with, then travel to Venice and die there.

I half expected her to say something more reflective or dramatic, like she would hug her family, tell them she loves them, and try to right all the wrong things she has done. But I wasn't talking to someone who rarely spends a quiet day ensconced in the peaceful presence of the people she loves. I was talking to a dutiful daughter who still goes home to her family in Bulacan and who enjoys staying home, eating, sleeping and shooting the breeze with her family whenever she has no work.

"I believe my character hasn't changed. I never bring my work home. When I go home to Bulacan, I'm just Regine the daughter or Regine the sister. I still wear my Islander tsinelas. I still eat with my hands. I'd like to think I've grown but I'm still very much childlike," she says.

She beams when I ask her about her mother, Tessie, someone who is rarely mentioned in the publicity about her, but who, Regine professes, is just as instrumental as her father Gerry is in her success as a performer, as well as in keeping her grounded in reality.

"My mom plays the piano and the guitar. She played a big part in my musical training, although my dad gets most of the publicity because he always accompanies me, and because my mom is shy. She's a true blue probinsyana. She's very conservative. Even now, there are some things about this business that she still doesn't understand," Regine says.

Although her dad, she adds, is "the joker in the family," Regine thinks she got her natural cheerfulness from her mom.

"My mom is the funniest human being I've ever met. She has this incredible sense of humor. She finds humor in anything and everything. She's also very malambing. She always tells me she loves me. When I talk to her on the phone, she says I love you, even when we're just on the Intercom, she says I love you. She's so sweet!"

I always believed that to be rich, beautiful and famous is to risk losing ordinary human happiness. Life, if not altogether fair, should at least provide some bargaining chips for the burdened, some leverage to the many people who are struggling to stay afloat and eke out a living.

Common people should at least be able to experience the simple joys that the rich, beautiful and famous can't because of their privileged lives. That should be the tradeoff.

But then, maybe before me, this person who's been bucking the odds since she was a child deserves to be the exception.

Maybe she deserves to be spared the double-edged sword of celebrity. Maybe, as the proverb goes, she deserves to have her cake and eat it, too.

Why not, if she's remained true to herself? Why not this Regine, who doesn't have a gilded cage story to tell, whose life in the rarefied realms of fame doesn't need to be brought down to earth, for there her feet are and have always been firmly planted?

If there is any celebrity who keeps us alive in the darkness and whose happiness we should wish for in turn, I guess it should be her.