Hilda Koronel, Private Person

By Ricardo F. Lo
February 2, 1978 Expressweek

 Strictly a private person. Very private. That’s what Hilda Koronel is and that’s what she will forever be. A VPP. She lives all by herself in Cubao, between Nepa-Q-Mart and Stella Maris College, and if you don’t know, you wouldn’t suspect that an actress lives there. It’s so quiet amid the otherwise noisy neighbourhood and you’d never see a single movie fan or an autograph-seeker hanging around the gate.


That’s how she wants her life to be: quiet and uncomplicated, which is an Herculean task really because she belongs (in a way, yes) to a profession laden with intrigues and sensationalism and everything but quietude.


“I wish people would stop being curious about my private life,” Hilda would plead every once too often.

 Although she hides behind a veil of mystery, she is constantly being hounded by gossipmongers and the deeper she retreats into her shell, the more nosy the public becomes. “I mind my own business,” she would declare, “and I wish people would mind theirs, too.” But she being a public figure (a tag Hilda attaches so much aversion to), how can people leave her alone?


And so they continue to prey into her personal life. Is it true that she has been actually married to Jay Ilagan and she now wants that marriage declared null and void because she wants to marry her new boyfriend from Ateneo? Or, have they really gotten nitched in HongKong last month? No, you don’t ask Hilda such questions or you run the risk of being summarily dismissed: “Just because I’m in the movies doesn’t mean that I am duty-bound to tell the public everything about me. I, too, am entitled to a degree of privacy.”


At 21 (she celebrated her birthday last January 18), Hilda has gone through tough tests in life (which she calls “little deaths”) which could have easily crushed a weak-willed woman to pieces. Family crisis. Emotional crisis. Professional crisis. She survived them all. “My God,” says a Hilda diehard, “she should get a special award for Valor!” Those experiences must have tempered her so and hardened her inside.


“I used to be bothered by gossip,” according to Hilda, “but now, no more,” so you can call her a snob or suplada or whatever name you want to hurl at her, and she wouldn’t mind. “I’m just being myself,” she once said as if in self-defense. “Why should I pretend to like people whom I don’t like? I have to like a person before I go out of my way to talk to him or greet him. I’m just being natural, I’m just being myself.”

 And the movie people seem to have learned to accept her for what she is. Her film assignments come few and far-between (by choice, yes,) but when she does agree to make a movie, it’s actually because the role is good. She respects the word “actress” and she doesn’t flaunt it around like a price tag. Last year, she did no more than four films, but all of them are memorable. Like ‘Halikan Mo At Magpaalam Sa Kahapon.’ Or, the recent ‘Kung Mangarap Ka’t Magising’ where Director Mike de Leon sort of immortalized every angle of Hilda’s beautiful face. “Oh, that lovely face,” said Lino Brocka, one of the directors who adore Hilda and who, along with nine other “beauty experts” (including Romeo Vitug, Auggie Cordero, Tingting Cojuangco, Pitoy Moreno, Lupita Concio, Joseph Estrada, Julie Yap-Daza, Dante Silverio and Celso Ad. Castillo) unanimously voted Hilda as The Loveliest Face in Local Movies in a poll conducted by Expressweek two years ago (actually, Hilda tied with Pilar Pilapil for the first place; Pilar also got a perfect vote of 10). “Ijust love that face,” added Lino who never fails to capture “that face’s” sensitive features in intimate close-ups.


She really is like Lolita in more ways than one. Never mind if some detractors are saying that Hilda is just trying her best to live up to that Image. Like Lolita, Hilda doesn’t enjoy swinging in the Showbiz social whirl, she shuns parties (“Sometime I do attend some, but only to show my face”), she refused to talk about her private life, she seldom smiles, she carries with her an aura of enigma, and she has a few friends from among the movie stars (“I have only ten close friends but all of them are true, real friends,” Hilda admitted. Jay, in spite of their split, happens to be one of them).


R. F. Lo