Pilar Pilapil (born 12 October 1950 in Liloan, Cebu) was the Binibining Pilipinas-Universe 1967. A beauty queen and a movie star at the age of 17, she was prominent in the Philippines in the 1970s. Her acting career spanned for three decades, winning two major acting awards. Presently, she is active as a Born Again Christian missionary.
EXCERPT FROM HER AUTOBIOGRAPHY
The youngest of six girls (with four brothers after her) recalled that childhood, spent with a spinster aunt since age five, with an overtone of bitterness toward a father who, she insists, didn’t love her, citing an incident when she was 14 and starting to be "mischievous" with the guys: She obeyed terrified when her father, depressed after losing his job at a tire company, summoned her to his room and, she narrated, "shut the door behind me and I learned just how very cruel my father could be."
What that "cruelty" was she didn’t elaborate. But after that incident, she says, "My life was never again the same."
Faking her age (18, she indicated in the application when in fact she was only sweet sixteen), she won as Bb. Pilipinas-Universe in 1967. After representing the country in that year’s Miss Universe Pageant, Pilar succumbed to the lure of showbiz, rising above being "a mere beauty" by winning a Best Actress award (for Imelda, ang Uliran) at the Manila Film Festival.
And she fell in love with, you guessed it, older men, first with Dolphy (who, according to some sources, she almost married) and then with a man whom she identifies only as Doy, father of her only child Pia who married a handsome blind model. Pilar recalled that on their first meeting, the man Doy tried to seduce her ("...the fact that he was proposing sex without romance was a big turn-off to me..."), so she ran out of the back entrance and down the stairs because the elevator of the apartment building was out of order, much like "Cinderella running away from my Prince Charming."
Well, to make a long story short, Pilar fell deeply in love with the man Doy, "even though he was married with several children," convinced that "I believed I learned to love him, and I believed that he loved me," foolishly desiring that they would be together forever even if she knew that that could never happen.
One of Pilar’s poignant recollections of the man Doy was when he fought with his wife (unidentified in the book) and he stayed with Pilar for one week: Midnight came and my helper used the intercom and told me that Doy’s two daughters were downstairs. I went down to see them while Pia (then only about three years old) and her dad were fast asleep. As we talked, his daughter told me, "You finally found what you wanted." I replied, "It’s not a matter of what I want, it’s a matter of how many people get hurt in the process. There are eight of you, nine including your mother. There are only two of us." They both became quiet and asked if they could see their father. I led the elder daughter to our bedroom upstairs and she woke her dad, saying, "Dad, mom is already home." He woke up and told me, "Mama (our term of endearment), I’ll go home first."
SOURCE:Ricki Lo
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