All-around actor

MANILA, Philippines – There are many ways to get in touch with Ronnie Lazaro who won the Best Supporting Actor trophy as the Muslim datu in Marilou Diaz-Abaya’s Bagong Buwan.

You can casually drop by at any of the three branches of JT’s (Joel Torre’s) Manukan Grille and find him enjoying a round of beer with his wife Lola who teaches Spanish at Instituto Cervantes.

Or you can text only to find out he is shooting a film with Piolo Pascual in Zambales or Bukidnon and some months later, he is on a yearly sabbatical in Spain with his family.

“There is no word to describe it,” says Ronnie of his marriage to a Spanish wife. “It is just pure bliss.”

Of his wife Lola, his compliment is justified and rightly so: “She is just full of surprises! She always find ways to make the family enjoy rare moments together. Most of all, she allows me to express myself and the last important thing, she supports my art.”

He dots on his 10-year-old Gabriel for quite a reason, “Having a son late in my life, I have to be physically ready all the time,” he says.

The family often is a curious sight when they drive together. More often than not, he is mistaken for someone other than the head of the family.

“They always mistake me for a driver of the family,” chuckles Ronnie whose physical features make him perfect for strong character types like a hardworking fisherman (Sa Pusod ng Dagat), an aggrieved Muslim patriarch (Bagong Buwan) or a character in his first feature film, Boatman. At the moment, Ronnie keeps a pretty smooth schedule commuting between telenovelas and feature films. “In-between shoots, he says, “my routine is strictly work, family time and some little social functions.”

For the record, a good 29 years of his life were already devoted to theater and film.

The first few years in showbiz, he admits, was a lot of struggle. “I wasn’t earning much but I got to hone my craft really well,” he says.

Of course his landmark film after Oro, Plata, Mata (where he received his first acting nomination as head of the guerillas) was the title role in Tikoy Aguiluz’s Boatman.        

Looking back, his role in Boatman might be considered a parable of the triumph of evil over youthful innocence. Unexpectedly, it turned his reel and real life inside out. His intense acting in this part again got him an acting nomination. But he lost to Jay Ilagan for the latter’s part in Sister Stella L.

For what it was worth, Boatman was one assignment he would consider highly significant.

He recalled earlier “One month before the camera started grinding, I went to Pagsanjan to immerse and be a real boatman. I ate there, slept there, drank with real boatmen and learned how to row. I didn’t want to act the part of the boatman. I want to be one. I had no idea what they talk about in acting schools like method acting. I didn’t want to act out the part; I had to be a real boatman. But the trouble was two months after finishing the film, I was still playing the part and I had to learn how to shed my screen role from the real one.”

What he went through was water under the bridge but the role ended beyond Pagsanjan River and ended up in Manila where the character sold his body and soul in a live show act (toro) just to survive. “I didn’t want to finish the film,” Ronnie recalled. “It was (actress) Betty Mae Piccio who prodded me to finish the film.”

Perhaps it was the character’s sojourn from barrio idyll to Lower Depths that jolted him. ”Talagang nandiri ako,” he admitted.

But the accolade escaped him. He had reservations about the role but nevertheless finished the project for what it was.

The period after Boatman was what Ronnie would call his most trying and difficult phase. “There was no other project after the film was shown. It seemed I was fighting with everybody, a classic case of me against the world. I would say that was the lowest phase of my life. It seemed nobody wanted me except Joel Torre. At the time, I think it was only Joel who believed in me. I guess I dug deeper into an imaginary grave just to give me a very strong motivation to get up and be reborn.”

The actor was born in Fabrica, Sagay City in Negros Occidental. Quite unlikely, he had two years of singing stint in the tenor section of the La Salle (Bacolod) Glee Club with Joel Navarro and got to sing I Have Dreamed as Lun Tha in a local production of The King and I.

One Manny Julian discovered Ronnie‘s theater potential in Bacolod, then he did improvisational plays with Peque Gallaga on top of acting in them and soon he was good enough to play the role of the katiwala in the Lino Brocka film, Gumising Ka Maruja which was shot in Bacolod.

“That was my first film and when I saw it at Era Theater in Bacolod later, I couldn’t help telling myself, ‘Finally, I am immortalized.’”

Going back to theater was a good transition as he wanted to continue honing his craft regardless of whether he got good projects or not.

It was also the time that his post-Boatman healing process started. It helped that he had a Mitch Valdes for a neighbor who introduced him to meditation. “That was another turning point in my life,” he recalled earlier. “I learned to forgive not just others but mainly myself, I learned to love myself and realized you can’t love others until you learn to care for yourself as well. I got rid of a lot of mental baggage and started to have a peaceful and meaningful life.”

Soon, he was back to the silver screen, even got to appear in foreign projects (a remake of Return from the River Kwai and some Chuck Norris films) and was soon active in both stage and television.

At 51, Ronnie is thankful for a lot of good projects coming his way.

He was in Lav Diaz’s 10-hour opus The Evolution of the Filipino Family, he is in innumerable entries of the Cinemalaya short film competitions year in and year out and at one time, he reprised the role of taong grasa (village idiot) in the Cesar Montano film, Panaghoy Sa Suba (The Call of the River).

Needless to say, he has a special heart for independent filmmakers. “I like to invest on them because our film industry needs new blood,” he says. “They might be the answer to the present economic crisis plaguing the industry. I basically like acting in independent films because I am more relaxed, I have more leeway to be more creative and I discover new things about acting.”

He concludes, “I like acting because it allows you to become both a sinner and a saint.”

Whether he was invoking black humor or not, Ronnie Lazaro says the act of forgiving has immensely affected his acting.

Asked what was the best way to lead an actor’s life, Ronnie said quite seriously, “Be a saint.”