Life on the fast lane

Don’t ever trust Belinda Panelo to keep still. She is too goal-oriented, so self-propelled, for that. If she’s not in the MTV Asia studio for her regular work as VJ since 1999, Belinda is reading a book on acting. Or she may be in some exotic place like Thailand, scrounging through rare orientalia she can bring home to friends.

"I’m always looking out for what’s next," the 5’6" tall VJ says. "I get restless when I’m idle."

On a recent visit to the US (where her mom is based), Belinda didn’t waste time shopping ’til she dropped. She enrolled in an acting workshop at the prestigious New York Film Academy for one-and-a-half months.

At 14, when other girls are busy dreaming about the campus heartthrob, Belinda was earning a living – however small – selling newspapers with her brothers and sisters in the US (she was born there).

"We’d wake up very early, roll the newspapers in a rubber band, and deliver them to homes," Belinda recalls those lean days without anger nor bitterness.

She learned to fend for herself at 16, when even independent American teeners were still enjoying the comforts of home with their parents.

Belinda lived on her own, paid the rent for her humble pad, and took odd jobs which she got paid for on a minimum wage scale, minus the usual taxes in the US.

"My money was just enough to pay for my basic needs like health and utilities," she remembers. And she kept on working, in the mall, in an airport store where she eventually rose to the position of manager, just to make ends meet.

The glamorous VJ struggling to make a living? You’d better believe it.

"My parents (her mom is an American, her dad a Filipino who now lives in Montalban) divorced when I was 11. My mom was a housewife who had to work again to earn a living. So that early, I learned that I can’t rely on someone to take care of me all the time. I have to fend for myself," relates Belinda.

The training began right at home. Belinda and her siblings did household chores to help their working mom manage her time better. Belinda dutifully washed dishes and cleaned the house – a skill that would come in handy now that she’s on her own. Living the hard life also sparked her gung-ho spirit.

"I vowed to myself that I’ll do my best in any job so that I will never go through what I went through as a teenager," reveals Belinda.

Boy, is she keeping that vow.

Today, at 28, she has chalked up enough acting credentials to merit her director, Joey Javier Reyes’ comment that yes, "Belinda has depth."

Her music-loving VJ role and those countless TV commercials she has done only skim the surface of her personality.

They do not, for instance, account for the fact that Belinda loves performing in theater.

She has headlined Nestor Torre’s Etiquette for Mistresses, Mga Bagong Bayani and Beauty and the Best, and The Vagina Monologues for Monique Wilson’s New Voice Company.

Next month, Belinda is slated to do the Eve Ensler play at Music Museum.

Belinda wouldn’t mind seeing her list of theater credits get longer and longer, except that "I don’t sing, and most theater productions are musicales."

Lately, her acting talent found another venue – the movies.

Director Joey Javier Reyes took one look at her in the soap opera Sa Puso Ko Iingatan Ka, and concluded she has depth.

But it took him two weeks to convince Belinda to accept the role of an eccentric painter who hates men in Star Cinema’s 9 Mornings. He had to convince her this is not just another role where she would again be cast as contravida.

Belinda is not the type who will get any role just for the sake of being busy.

"I don’t want to be super busy. All I want is to do work I love," she says.

And so, when she found out 9 Mornings will cast her in a new, challenging role, she said yes. After all, it’s in keeping with the artist in her, the kind who took the front line when her brothers and sisters mounted simple plays at home.

"I was the clown in the family. While the rest of my brothers and sisters were the quiet types, I loved to rummage the closet for old clothes I could turn into costumes for our play," recalls Belinda.

She got her offbeat character from her mom; her love for performing from her dad, who used to regale the family with funny stories.

Now, she’s putting all that to good use, and doing herself proud in the process. No wonder, Belinda Panelo couldn’t be any happier.