Judy Ann Santos after 20 years in the biz

Popular TV-film actress Judy Ann Santos is marking her 20th year in the biz with a series of big bangs that started with an anniversary concert at the Araneta Coliseum.

Santos really has a lot to toast herself for: In her late 20s, she’s won acting awards, chalked up a hit film, “Kasal, Kasali, Kasalo,” last year, and will star in its sequel, another potential blockbuster, this December.

And she has a new TV soap, “Ysabella,” plus a number of profitable endorsements to add to her nest eggs.

Even her personal life is fairly humming along, with the actress candidly sharing that she’s happy with her fiancé, Ryan Agoncillo.

Indeed, the only low point in her career these days is her insistence on singing and releasing albums, when she doesn’t have a good singing voice.

We’re glad that Judy Ann is flying high. After 20 long years of hard work, she’s entitled to feel happy, fulfilled and richly rewarded for her hectic workload.

However, we note some aspects of Judy Ann’s acting career that she might pay more attention to, if she genuinely wants her next 10 or 20 years in show business to be truly gratifying and dramatically enriching.

People who’ve watched her from the beginning will recall that, in her early teen years, the actress’ best suit was her dramatically expressive eyes. On point of acting ability, she was no better than her young contemporaries. To her credit, Judy Ann persevered, while other starlets fell by the wayside.

But her acting ability really got honed only when she started making movies with ace directors. Slowly but surely, they raised the artistic bar for her in terms of challenging roles.

That was all to the good, but we noted even then that the “quickie” acting habits she had picked up on television were difficult for her to let go of.

To compensate, some film directors whipped up “pang-award” roles for her, movie parts loaded with “significant” and “relevant” dramatic elements.

The ploys were quite obvious, and we hoped that awards jurors could see through them—but no, the ploys worked and Judy Ann was officially cited as an exceptional actress—without having to give up her TV-style acting.

We felt sad about this, because it could give her the mistaken notion that awards could easily be won if an actress would come up with only a facsimile of deep and insightful characterization.

Our hope is that, now that she’s in her late 20s, Judy Ann has become mature and objective enough to realize that truly great acting can’t be finessed with cagey but contrived character construction and dramatic “emotional blackmail.”

In the off chance that this is indeed the case, Judy Ann should give her next truly significant film assignment the time, care and insight that her TV work has disallowed. In other words, she should no longer confuse her TV process with the deeper and longer preparation and introspection that truly outstanding film work requires.

She should also stop overloading her “pang-award” movie characters with “significant” conflicts and psychological tics. Instead, she should look for a genuinely complex character to portray, and give her next major dramatic assignment the time and emotional preparation it deserves.

If Judy Ann is able to make that major shift, her next big anniversary in the biz will be truly worth celebrating—because she shall finally become the “best” actress that she has too handily appeared to be thus far.

Nestor U. Torre
Philippine Daily Inquirer