Young actress meets older actor on movie set. Sparks fly during love scenes. Hormones rage. Romance blooms. They quietly set up housekeeping in luxury condo. Then she drops bombshell, announces pregnancy on national television.
Complication: He not only is more than 20 years her senior, but is still married and has three kids with his estranged wife. What’s more, he is known as a serial philanderer and has at least one other child by a longtime live-in partner.
The scenario would hardly raise an eyebrow in Hollywood. But this is the Philippines, the only Roman Catholic country in Asia, and the actress in question is Kris Aquino, the youngest daughter of former president Corazon Aquino.
Thus, the revelation Monday night by Kris Aquino, 23, that she is three months pregnant by actor Phillip Salvador, 45, scandalized Filipinos and presented the former president, a devout Catholic, with a moral dilemma. Thanks in large part to the power of the church, divorce is banned here, and legal annulments of marriages can be time-consuming.
For the Philippines, the prospect of an unwed mother in the former First Family is especially awkward at a time when the country is preparing for a visit next month by Pope John Paul II.
It is also a bit ironic. During her turbulent presidency from 1986 to 1992, Aquino followed the church’s dictates against birth control and gutted the country’s family planning program. Since leaving office, she has sided with Cardinal Jaime Sin, the Philippines’ Roman Catholic primate, in his birth control dispute with the government of her chosen successor, President Fidel Ramos. In August, Aquino appeared with Sin at a large rally to protest a U.N. population conference in Cairo and denounce the Ramos government’s family planning methods as “intrinsically evil.” She even joined the cardinal in publicly burning a replica of the Cairo conference’s draft program of action.
After weeks of lying low, Kris Aquino announced on a television talk show Monday night that she and Salvador have been living together — over her mother’s strenuous objections — and that she is due to give birth in June. She said she would fly to the United States with Salvador next week and return to Manila in January.
“Mrs. Aquino … believes in the sanctity of marriage,” Siytangco said.
Aquino, who survived seven coup attempts against her administration, told a Manila newspaper that she is now facing one of her toughest tests. She asked supporters to “continue praying for Kris, especially during this period of crisis,” the Philippine Star reported.
The couple’s travel plans sparked speculation that Salvador plans to divorce his wife in the United States and tie the knot with Kris on the same trip. However, such a divorce and remarriage would not be legally recognized here, since annulment is the only option for dissolving a marriage.
Last month, Salvador further fed the rumor mills by petitioning a Manila court to annul his 1975 marriage to Maria Asuncion Dabao, who now lives in the United States with the couple’s three children, the oldest of whom is a 19-year-old university student. Salvador told the court he has been estranged from his wife for 10 years and is no longer “capable of complying with the essential obligations of the marriage.”
Salvador and Kris Aquino met this year on the set of the Tagalog-language movie “Nandito Ako” (“I’m Here”) and began dating secretly. But the secret was soon plastered all over Manila’s newspapers when Salvador confessed at an emotional press conference that he was in love with Kris and had ditched his 24-year-old mistress, former starlet Vivialyn Dungca, with whom he has a 2-year-old daughter. Commentators remarked on the resemblance between the two young women. One described Dungca as “Kris minus the baby fat.”
Like Salvador, Kris Aquino has been no stranger to controversy. After Corazon Aquino rode to power on the wave of the Philippines’ “people power” revolution in February 1986, the effervescent Kris had no trouble landing movie roles — much to her mother’s consternation. Her movies were hits with young fans, but drew what can charitably be called mixed reviews from critics. One of them once described her as “spectacularly untalented.”
Starring roles in a recent spate of gory dramas based on actual crimes — a genre known here as “chop-chop” films — earned her the nickname “the massacre queen.”
Still, Kris kept her sense of humor. She once brought her costar in a popular comedy — a toothless, bug-eyed comedian named Rene Requiestas — to her mother’s office and announced that they were engaged.
Friends of the Aquino family say the headstrong Kris takes after her father, the late opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr., who was assassinated by soldiers loyal to President Ferdinand Marcos at the Manila airport in 1983.
And like most politicians, she has spoken words in public that she perhaps lived to regret. Interviewed in a television talk show early last year, she said in her bubbly style, “On premarital sex, I take the Catholic stand. I think it’s really important to wait until you get married. It’s very old-fashioned, but that’s the way I was brought up. And I think whoever marries me will be very lucky, because he’ll get me whole, right? That’s nice.”
CAPTION: The prospect of former First Family member Kris Aquino’s unwed motherhood is awkward at a time when the country is preparing for a visit by the pope.
