It took three years to finish the house. "I began to build it when I was still modeling," she told me when I bumped into her in Bambi Fuentes' salon in Quezon City. It has seven bedrooms, three comfort rooms and has an American motif. She herself bought the furnishings.
The lot is her mom's, which she inherited from Cass' lola. Her lola was still alive when work on the house began, Cass says. "I wasn't earning a lot at that time. But after Pinoy Big Brother I was able to raise enough money to speed up the construction."
Her mom and older brother live in the house, looking after it while Cass works in Manila. Cass rents a flat at the President's Tower for P15,000 a month.
In Manila she drives around in a brand new car worth almost P1.5 million.
She had the car for just three days when she crashed it along Edsa. She says she stepped on the gas and not on the brake. "The insurance company shouldered the repair," she says.
She bought the car on an 18-month installment plan. Each month she pays P35,000.
She can afford the niceties because she has a lot of projects coming her way. She's cast in "Enteng Kabisote" and "Shake, Rattle and Roll" (LRT episode). In Enteng, Cass plays a policewoman alongside Vic Sotto. She says she has a number of action scenes in the movie, but she refuses to have a double. In "Shake, Rattle and Roll," Cass is joined by Manilyn Reynes and Keempee de Leon. The two films are entered in the Metro Manila Film Festival in December.
The excitement level rose when Robby Rabbit endorser Antonia "Anya" Babao arrived with mom Ms. Tintin Bersola and dad Juluis Babao. Steven L. Ching, CEO of Characters Unlimited, the manufacturer of Robby Rabbit, handed Anya her fun club certificate of membership. "I want Anya to grow up with good values. That's why I enlisted her as the first member of the RR Fun Club," Tintin said.
Madonna was roundly criticized when she flew the child, David Banda, out of Malawi to London last month. The boy's father was also claiming he never fully approved of the adoption. Then Malawian rights groups are challenging the adoption in court.
For the moment the pop diva has been granted a temporary custody order for the boy, but the controversy is far from over.
The rights groups claim that Malawi's government bent the rules by allowing Banda to be flown out of the country just days after Madonna first applied to adopt him. Under Malawian law, parents who want to adopt usually face an 18-month period of monitoring.
Mounh Sarath, director of Cambodian Vision in Development (CVD), claims that the actress had broken funding promises and accused him of stealing money meant for her work in Cambodia. CVD had co-managed the $1.5-million Maddox Jolie project, named after her five-year-old Cambodian son.
Angelina shot "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" at Cambodia's famed Angkor Wat temple in 2001. She and husband Brad Pitt have one other adopted child, Zahara, and recently Angelina gave birth to a baby boy Shiloh.