The woman without a face

Pilar Pilapil and I haven’t really been friends that long. I remember interviewing her for the first time in 1999 during the advertising congress that was held in her native Cebu. Since Startalk had to do stories about Cebu and its people, we decided to seek out Pilar, who had to fly from Manila to the Queen of the South for that interview – set at the second floor lobby of the Waterfront Hotel.

The following year, when she turned Golden Girl, she invited me to her party (the food was heavenly!) at the Via Mare in Tektite.

Then, when ABS-CBN’s Cinema One decided to feature her in Persona she requested the production staff to invite me to do the interview – a task I gladly accepted even if it meant hopping over to enemy territory.

Of course, even before I got to interview Pilar the first time around, I already knew a lot about her. A major star, everything about her life had been duly chronicled in the papers and gossiped about in private conversations.

But for all the things said about her, everyone agreed that she was a fine and respected actress – one of the country’s best.

In her book, The Woman Without a Face, she finally clarifies all those rumors about her in the late ’70s, one of which was about her suicide attempt – and even that really ugly one about her supposed venereal disease (those were just bedsores). She omits in the book, however, that phase of her life when she had grown armpit hair because obviously she thinks that is basically unimportant – and yet that will surely figure in a book of trivia about Philippine show business because she was the only local actress to have done that.

Actually, I have already asked Pilar about the suicide attempt and the reported venereal disease (and yes even about the armpit hair) in my two interviews with her. She answered them – although television with its precious airtime, she didn’t have all the time in the world to expound on these issues. In the book, however, she goes into details about those chapters in her life and explains why and how these things happened.

And she also gives out the names of men she had romanced and even those who wanted to get involved with her, but whose advances she had rebuffed – no, not for all the money in the world.

If you want to know who these men were, you have to buy the book because I’m not reprinting the names here out of deference to their heirs (some have gone ahead of us) – never mind if I’m not particularly fond of the widow of one of them.

It’s something really petty. A few years ago, Ricky Lo had introduced me to this woman (she had yet to be widowed then), who obviously got so giddy just being face to face with Ricky that she extended her hand toward my direction without even looking at me. Heck, I could have grabbed a skeleton, stuck its hand with its all-bone fingers and she wouldn’t have noticed.

No, I didn’t expect her to genuflect in front of me. All I wanted was a little show of politeness.

But despite that display of rudeness, I will still give her and her family all the respect by not repeating here the patriarch’s name, which was printed in the book.

The Woman Without a Face actually isn’t really just a tell-all book. Although in snatches, it goes back in time and relives some moments in Philippine history like Pope Paul VI’s visit and the attempt on his life by Bolivian artist Benjamin Mendoza (who loved to sketch Pilar), the declaration of martial law in 1972 and the first EDSA revolution in 1986.

There is one piece of inaccuracy though (really a minor one): The ABS-CBN musical, This Girl Pilar, was already off the air by the time martial law came around. Pilar’s regular television program then was the drama anthology Ala-ala on ABS-CBN Channel 4.

Except for that one lapse, Pilar’s memory is basically photographic. The way she describes in the book past events of her life – in Cebu, in Manila and even in Miami in Florida (when she competed in the Miss Universe pageant) – it was like you were there with her when she went through her joys, triumphs and pains.

Of course, having embraced religion as the main guiding force of her life, the book turns spiritual toward the end – which is still fine because that should make great reading in this season of Lent. (She had carefully chosen the biblical passages in the book.)

The Woman Without a Face is recommended reading not only for celebrities, but for everyone – male or female – taking this voyage called life. In this book you learn from Pilar’s mistakes – how to avoid them or correct them.

While you may say that Pilar was more blessed than most of us – when it comes to genes and talent – in our journey in life, things somehow get evened out for we all have our own crosses to carry in this world.

In the case of Pilar, since a lot more was given to her, her burdens were heavier. But she made it across – although she still has peaks and valleys to traverse because life has not ended for her yet.

Basically, however, we can already say that the woman without a face has finally redeemed her soul from life’s evil clutches and is now walking in the light with the Lord.