PURE JOYCE

She strides into Shiraz — demurely, dare we say? — in a brown halter dress and fuchsia-tinted aviator glasses, and immediately the scene is not what you’d expect.

Where are the rubbernecking fans? The drooling jologs? The ogling young men?

This is Joyce Jimenez, after all: Sex Goddess.

But this afternoon, Ms. Jimenez, all 5’2" of her, does not appear in any danger of being swamped by fans or beset by oglers. For one thing, the trendy Makati restaurant is closed for lunch, a day devoted to Ms. Jimenez’s photo shoot for this issue of People Asia. The actress/sex goddess smiles as she is led to a private upper table by the solicitous staff. Soon, she is attended to by a growing number of assistants who seem to emerge like ghosts from the quiet wood-and-leather interiors of Shiraz. A staff member tapes a sign to the door: CLOSED FOR LUNCH – PRIVATE FUNCTION.

And you wonder how private it will be, with over 30 people eventually milling around, setting up lights, answering calls, chatting, schmoozing, nodding and gazing. Each guest has his or her own entourage, and it soon becomes quite a private little party. Yet somehow it seems small commotion for such a hot commodity.

Meet the New Joyce Jimenez. She is compact, self-contained, and much slimmer these days. Thirty pounds slimmer, to be exact, with a more sophisticated, almost muted glamour replacing her previous voluptuousness. At age 23, Ms. Jimenez knows all about fame, celebrity and commotion. She has starred or been in over a dozen films which built her reputation as a sexy actress willing to bare more than her heart and soul on the screen. It was Scorpio Nights 2 that sealed her status as a sex icon: nearly every young Filipino male claims to have watched the film, some repeatedly. Her subsequent photo book, Private Joyce , sold like — well, nude photos of Joyce Jimenez.

And here she is, quietly checking her text messages, waiting for the interview and photo shoot to begin. On a table nearby lies an array of baby clothes, which Ms. Jimenez will soon be slipping into and out of for the photo spread. All in a day’s work for a sex goddess.

Face to face with Joyce Jimenez, one is struck by how tiny she seems. Her shoulders are slim; she looks up earnestly from the sunken leather seat, her brown eyes poised and centered behind glasses. One fluttering hand runs through a short brown shag, the color of Coca-Cola in the afternoon sun. I ask her what she feels has been her biggest accomplishment since landing in Manila in 1997.

Being able to stay," she admits. "And being able to stand on my own two feet." It couldn’t have been easy for an 18-year-old from West

Covina, California, fresh out of high school, to come to the Philippines and make it work. She turned down a semester at UCLA, instead taking a month-long vacation in Manila with a vague promise to call her manager, Shirley Kuan, once she arrived. Her résumé was not extensive at the time: she had won the "Miss Photogenic" title in the Miss Philippines-Hollywood contest. Her mother stayed with her for a month while Kuan approached Viva Films for a contract. The rest was up to Joyce. "I just thought to myself, if it doesn’t work out and I really can’t handle it after three years, I’ll go home. But I’m not going to go in the middle of it and leave the responsibility that I put upon myself."

Joyce had a number of small (often decorative) roles in films, but it wasn’t until she started disrobing for the camera that her career began taking off. With Scorpio Nights 2, she became a sex icon: her movie posters sold out, websites sprang up, and the public’s image of Joyce Jimenez was cemented into place.

Joyce still seems a bit bewildered by all the attention, and it’s hard to tell whether this, too, is part of a carefully-considered image: a patented mixture of seductive and innocent, sultry and shy. "Sex goddess?" She flashes the trademark smile. "Wow, who wouldn’t want to be thought of as a goddess, right? I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t flattering."

She’s quick to point out, however, that she is neither calculating nor active in seeking all this bold star status. "The reason why I joined show business wasn’t because I wanted to become a star, or become famous or rich. I think it’s just because I had an opportunity, and I wanted to make the most of it." And there’s that smile again.

I guess when you come down to it, it was served to me on a silver platter," she continues. "I didn’t have to go on auditions, I didn’t have to search for an agent, I didn’t have to go on the so-called casting couch for the big companies. It was just served to me."

There are downsides to being a sex symbol, which Joyce is quick to point out. She has her detractors, including the MTRCB, which slapped X ratings on several of her films. "You just try to remember that there are some people that don’t think of you that way, and some people who think less of you than that," she confides. "So you appreciate the people who do think of you that way, and you just strive to become better because of them."

Her fame has led to lucrative contracts with San Miguel, weekly TV shows and currently a stint with Star Cinema. Now she seems to be veering more toward romantic comedy roles, such as Narinig Mo Na Ba Ang L8est. But the image of the sexy Joyce — that image is hard to forget. She is recognized wherever she goes, which makes public appearances a bit sticky. "I was never really the mallsy type," she admits, so it’s no great sacrifice to skip places where her celebrity causes rows and rows of men to stare down at her from mall balconies and escalators. "It’s weird, because you go from like three years ago, sometimes the saleslady won’t even give you a second look," Joyce recalls. "But now people will go up to you, people will scream your name. And it’s nice. Kahit papaano, it’s nice."

And maybe a little surreal, for a former Californian high-schooler who used to be one of those teenaged mall-walkers herself. Sometimes she forgets she’s a celebrity, like when she leaves the country for a while. But then it comes flooding back to her, like waves of Manila heat. "There was a time I was gone for a month, and for some reason I thought since I haven’t been seen in public, that people would forget about me. And I went to the mall, and… there they were!"

Nudity is not a subject that bothers Ms. Jimenez. We talk openly about her body, its effect on those around her, and her own relationship to it. Mentioning her numerous scenes in the buff, she shrugs and smiles. "It’s life. It’s the human body. I don’t feel ashamed about anything I’ve done in my films."

Born Joyce Reintegrado (her manager reportedly picked the showbiz surname at random from a phone book), the actress has had to reinvent herself more than once. The decision to go nude was just one of those choices. After all, Madonna played with her image for decades; nudity was just another layer to be uncovered for the blonde pop chameleon. Meanwhile, a recent Bazaar magazine cover features teen-queen Britney Spears and the headline "Sex and Power," underscoring the attraction of using sex to further your career. Yet one doesn’t get the sense that Joyce Jimenez consciously guides or crafts these choices. She’s the first to admit that much of her career "just happened." She’s no munitions expert; rather, she seems like a sex bomb largely unaware of the TNT she’s carrying.

It wasn’t always easy to shed her inhibitions on camera, either. She turned down two early roles requiring her to strip before finally giving in when she was 20. "I agreed to it because, number one, it was a star role. Number two, more than anything, I was ready for it. Before, I wasn’t.

"Being comfortable with yourself is very hard," she adds. "I mean, sometimes for people to look at themselves in the mirror is really hard to do. So I had to be comfortable with my body and my sexuality first. I had to be prepared.

"Physically, I think I was never really ready for the nude stuff," Joyce says of those early roles. (Some would disagree.) "But emotionally, I really wasn’t ready. And I didn’t want to force it upon myself. I wanted to be sure that, when I’d hear these things from my detractors, or especially from my parents, I could handle it with my head held high and not be ashamed of what I did." And her family, whom she describes as "conservative" and "practicing Catholic"? Any conflicts there? "My family have been very supportive of my career," she says simply. "They trust me in my choices."

Ironically, Joyce claims it was doing those nude scenes that made her more comfortable with her own body. "Because I figured, I may not have the greatest body in the whole world, but hell, there’s only two bodies anyway (male and female): they just come in different shapes and sizes. So the way to make myself not feel so bad — because I was heavy then — was to tell myself that at least people know I’m human, and I’m not this mannequin figure."

Today, her figure is closer to that Barbie-Doll ideal than ever before. As mentioned, she’s much slimmer. Her cheekbones are smooth and sleek, her face no longer carrying much baby fat. But she’s still got those traffic-stopping curves.

What’s funny is, it’s only when I stopped trying to lose weight that it came off," she says. "I just got tired of everyone calling me fat, so I just figured, you know what? It’s been three years, I think the public’s accepted my body the way it is. So I stopped dieting. And that’s when, all of a sudden — I don’t know how — it just started to come off naturally."

First five, then 10 pounds disappeared, according to Joyce. She helped the process along by cutting down on fried and fast foods, chocolate and sweets. Her exercise regimen now includes an hour a day — three times a week working out at a gym, and twice a week boxing. Then there’s the much-vaunted "five meals a day" method.

"I told a friend I was going to the States and needed a diet," Joyce says, "and he explained to me that if you eat one or two big meals a day, your body’s going to store it, because your body thinks it’s not going to get food again. So if you eat five small meals a day, you’re going to make your metabolism faster." Of course, those five meals should include "sensible snacks, like carrot sticks or something like that."

Sculpting a body, sculpting a career: all part of the New Joyce Jimenez. After her contract with Viva expired in 1999, she signed a new one with Star Cinema. But the actress who describes herself as "a shy person at heart" is still open to doing nude scenes: "Sure (I’d do it), if the role called for it, and I felt it wasn’t exploitative."

I point out that exploitation can be a double-edged sword; that one can be worshipped for their body, yet still struggle to gain respect. Joyce concedes that, in the showbiz industry, "there are some men who look down on women." This makes her have to work that much harder to convince them she’s not a pushover. Noting that "women can be very strong," Joyce points out that appearing nude, ultimately, was her own choice.

All this from a 23-year-old who carries herself with a great deal of professionalism (for a sex goddess, one is tempted to add). Ms. Jimenez even showed up 10 minutes early for our interview, displaying a work ethic that is often lacking in her profession. I overhear her tell photographer Raymund Isaac that (TV co-star) Aga Muhlach had called her that morning. He asked if she was busy for lunch; she begged off, citing the interview and photo shoot. "Are you bullshitting?" was Aga’s incredulous reply. Apparently, actors sometimes "invent" work to avoid their many commitments and obligations. Not Ms. Jimenez.

She is, in truth, a package of contradictions: willing to bare all yet still impossibly girlish, thin yet strikingly busty, petite yet larger-than-life when the cameras roll, aware of her image yet claiming no particular control over it. As Joyce sits down for makeup, ready to slip into the baby-doll outfits that will accentuate her woman-child appeal, it’s clear she is more than aware of the gap between surface and reality. Guys, in particular, tend to make involuntary noises at the mere mention of her name — the kinds of sounds associated with a monkeyhouse. It seems like this response is hard-wired into the male psyche — clearly, it’s out of Joyce’s control. Regardless of what she does or does not do in her films, regardless of who she really is, this compact figure sitting across from me is going to trigger that response.

And Joyce Jimenez? She would swear this is not who she is at all.

"I would say that I’m the complete opposite. I’m not this vamp that they see on the screen. I’m a simple girl. I’m a kid at heart, more than anything. If you see me around, I’m the biggest kid you’ll see."

"I’m just a girl." Was it Marilyn Monroe or Julia Roberts who also uttered that disarming little phrase? (Maybe both.) In Joyce’s case, you have no doubts about the girl part. But somehow you know it can’t be as simple as all that.

WHAT TURNS JOYCE JIMENEZ ON:

What I look for in a man: Someone who’s serious, who understands what I’m doing with my career.

…And Turnoffs: Someone who’s vain. Someone who takes longer to get ready to go out than I do.

Favorite director: John Woo

Favorite actor: Russell Wong (The Joy Luck Club, Romeo Must Die)

Favorite actress: Sharon Cuneta

Favorite current book: Conversations With God

Favorite movies: The End of the Affair, Pay It Forward, and "The Little Mermaid is my favorite, maybe because I like to swim."

Favorite TV show: Sex and the City. "That one I always try to catch."

WHAT JOYCE THINKS OF…

Premarital sex: I’m not going to be a hypocrite, but I wouldn’t advise it, unless you’re ready, emotionally, physically.

Divorce: Let’s admit it, if we’re talking about the divorce issue here, it’s just a word: it’s the same as annulment.

Homosexuality: You can’t choose who you are. If you’re a certain way, you accept it and just live with it.

adultery: No respect for people that do that.

Virginity: You have to treasure it, and know that it’s more than just a word, it’s your sexuality, it’s your body.