Jay’s scary story

It takes a lot to scare the wits out of Jay Manalo. That’s because the usually cool and calm Jay has had his fill of real-life spine-tinglers as a boy growing up in bucolic Bulacan.

He recalls one day that made his hair stand on end and turned his otherwise predictable life into a scene straight from a horror movie.

"It was high noon. I was 16 then, and wandering around the rice fields with five of my friends. To reach the guava tree whose fruits we wanted to get, we took the short cut through a field with a bahay kubo (nipa hut) right smack in the middle of it all. What we saw sent goose bumps all over our bodies.

’’A creature in the bahay kubo was glaring at us, its face a fiery red, its neck and hand reaching out at us from the window!" relates Jay.

He still gets the chills even now that he seldom visits the place where his foster parents lived.

"We recited Our Father in unison without any prodding. Then, we ran as fast as our legs can take us to my friend’s grandma, who warned us never to go to that place ever. The creature, she says, is an aswang. No one has seen it before. She also told us that the bahay kubo, a relatively new structure there, must have been put up to guard the field from intruders," Jay continues.

The fact that he survived that scary encounter unscathed has made Jay feel he can deal with things that go bump into the night without fear. But in his first horror movie, Star Cinema’s Feng Shui, Jay had that old chilly feeling came back to him in a rush.

It was in one scene when he, as Inton, Kris Aquino’s husband, sees a bad spirit floating in mid-air. The dark, eerie mood caused by an evil spell that falls on the family, gripped him so badly, Jay admits "I wanted to jump out of the nearest window."

This time, he needed no motivation to convey the feeling of being gripped by the forces of evil. The usually calm and collected Jay was quaking in his shoes.

His foray into the horror genre shows how Jay is bent on flexing his acting muscles beyond the usual drama roles people see him in. Not that he needs to prove anything more. His Best Actor awards – Urian for Prosti in 2003 and Manila Filmfest for Huling Birhen that same year, and FAMAS for Bayaran this year – are enough.

It’s just that versatility is a skill a serious actor like Jay must hone year in and year out. Besides, typecasting is a no-no that not only turns an otherwise stellar career into a ho-hum thing. It could also spell doom in a field so competitive a new, fresher face is being discovered and trained every minute of the day.

Jay need not get worried about being eased out of the game. Feng Shui is already his third film for the year. Jay worked on the film simultaneously with Regal’s Singles at the height of the May election campaign season.

The Christmas holidays offers no let up, as Jay stars in two Metro Filmfest entries, Mano Po 3 and the period film Aishite Masu 1941 Simultaneous work on the festival entries has brought some headaches to Jay’s long-time manager Manny Valera, who was at first worried about his ward’s changing appearances in the films.

Jay, a Japanese colonel (complete with accented carabao English) in Aishite Masu 1941, sports a crew cut. He shifts to his regular hair style in Mano Po 3 (he also appeared with Kris in Mano Po 1 and 2). But the kinks appeared only early on. They have since been ironed out, thank you.

Jay’s smooth-sailing career is matched only by his equally hassle-free home life. The playboy and bold image has since flown out the window, even if Jay and wife Anna Raissa Austria recently fought over rumors linking him to a showbiz newcomer.

"It turns out that the guy being linked to her is Ateneo cager and occasional TV host BJ Manalo. I’m totally out of the picture," reveals Jay.

That ought to pacify Raissa and mother of their two children. More than that, it ought to bring peace to their love nest in Parañaque.

After all, Jay has been through turbulent times, especially in his personal life. It’s about time he enjoys some peace and quiet, now that he’s decided to play it straight.