HILDA KORONEL RETURNS AS
JOLINA'S MOM
Manila,
Aug. 15, 1998
- Hilda Koronel ends her latest hiatus this month when she returns to the
big screen in Star Cinema's LABS KITA... OKAY KA LANG? as young star Jolina
Magdangal's mother.
The movie also stars Marvin Agustin, Gio Alvarez, Vanessa del Bianco and Hilda's fellow veteran, Gina Pareno.
What does Hilda think of her young co-stars?
"I am enamoured by these young people. I am learning a lot from them. I just hope may natutunan din sila sa akin. I told them to make the most of their film careers. And they should also love their work," says Hilda.
Hilda Koronel was only 13 when she won the best supporting actress award for her performance in SANTIAGO in the late 60s. After that film, she was fortunate to be taken under the wings of the late great director Lino Brocka.
At 16, she made another Brocka classic, INSIANG which is considered by many a Filipino movie masterpiece. In the movie, Hilda played an innocent girl raped by her stepfather, who was portrayed effectively by character actor Ruel Vernal. Mona Lisa came out of retirement to play Hilda's mother.
After INSIANG, Hilda appeared in several memorable films, mostly directed by Brocka. Their names were almost always interlinked in film projects while the director was alive. The actress was devastated when Brocka died four years ago.
Hilda's downfall is her tendency to fall in love and forsake her career in favor of her lovelife. The last time she was in the headlines, it was over the last man in her life and a lady doctor who he was having an affair with while living with Hilda. Sensational accusations and counter- accusations, including incredible charges of witchcraft and evil spells, punctuated the colorful reports on that last Hilda Koronel real-life episode.
Like her career, Hilda's body weight has gone to astronomical heights and dizzying lows. The last time she was hideously overweight, she placed it under control by walking around the Greenhills Shopping Center several times at dawn daily. So successful was her regimen that overweight residents of Greenhills and Wack Wack have converted the parking lots surrounding the mall into an early morning jogging circuit.
Hilda Koronel, her taut face showing off Amerasian chiselled features, maintains the soft glow of sadness hanging like a curtain over her expressive eyes, as she looks around and finds herself playing support to teeners doing MTV-type light romantic movies.
Who would ever have thought? And where are the movies that deserve her talent?