Fabio Ide is here to stay

CEBU, Philippines - Brapanese import Fabio Ide proudly mouthed out the hardest Tagalog word he knew at the moment, courtesy of his twice-a-week tutorials with a language teacher: “Nakakapagbagabag.” Now that’s a tongue-twister even for us locals of Philippine soil!

The actor-model seems bent on mastering the language requirement to get better acting parts and to extend his 15 minutes of fame in this country which has seen an invasion of good-looking Brazilian-Japanese faces in the past years.

Together with his same-breed comrades Akihiro Sato and Daniel Matsunaga, the effortlessly gorgeous Fabio has found a second home in our tropical lands after working as a model in Bangkok, Singapore and other parts of Asia. The three studs are all under the talent agency Mercator Management and are also all under exclusive contracts with GMA 7.

“Yung accent ko medyo malakas but my Tagalog has improved. Ngayon, mas madali ko ng maintindihan at magsalita,” said the Sao Paulo-born Fabio during a backstage chat at an SM City Cebu mall show.

Today, Fabio has two regular TV shows: He is sidekick to funny folk Eugene Domingo and Allan K in Comedy Bar where he plays the bungling foreign talent dishing Tagalog lines and is a neighborhood mainstay in Cesar Montano and Iza Calzado’s sitcom Andres de Saya.

While comedy projects aren’t the first things that come to mind when appraising the 28-year-old talent, Fabio remarked he’s having the time of his life so far career-wise.

“I asked my manager and he said that for now, we’ll just accept the opportunities that come. And most of the offers that I’ve been receiving are in line with comedy. He told me that I’m doing good in comedy, so I’ll just enjoy the opportunities. There are not a lot of guys my type who’s Caucasian, a comedian and learning Tagalog because most of them now are dramatic artists,” he said.

Fabio added that in real life especially in the company of close friends, he actually loves to laugh and make other people laugh as well.

He doesn’t want to be boxed into the mold of a “bungling Tagalog-speaking foreigner” though. “I want to try something different as well. I want a little bit of drama, a little bit of action, but for now, I’m really enjoying comedy. I want to be that kind of actor who can do everything. If they give me a dramatic opportunity, I will appreciate it and strive to do my best. I’m using the shows I have at the moment to learn more Tagalog and gain better acting skills.”

Fabio further shared that he came to love acting when he began doing a lot of commercials. In fact, he went to Los Angeles to enroll in an acting school for a brief time. He related, “I like doing things I’m not used to, which I get to do through portraying different characters. And then for some reason, I went to the Philippines where I was given the opportunity to be an actor. It was when I appeared in Comedy Bar that I started getting more shows.”

He was in second year at Mackenzie University in Brazil taking up Marketing and Publicity when his sister asked him to join her in a go-see. We know all too well the familiar stories by now of how the tag-along’s become the discovered acts.

Fabio arrived here in 2006 for the first time, coming here once a year for a three-month contract at the least, when Akihiro convinced him to stay here for good, or until the offers keep on pouring in.

With a TV contract and a movie deal with Regal Films, it looks like this piece of hunk is here to stay for quite some time. (FREEMAN)