They’re ready for their closeup

On the local show biz scene, each new season introduces viewers to new lead players who desperately hope that they will be invited to stay. This year, the new finds include Jana Agoncillo, Janella Salvador, Iñigo Pascual and Lyca Gairanod. How are their stellar bids faring thus far?

Jana, the new child star on “Dream Dad,” is cute as a button and can play it both sad and lively with aplomb. Her best suit is the fact that she’s one of only a few child performers who talk simply, naturally and briefly, as real children do.

AGONCILLO. Can play it both sad and lonely with aplomb. PHOTO from abs-cbn.com

On the other hand, her performance can be too nicey-nice, lacking in the impish unpredictability that characterized the portrayals on Niño Muhlach and Aiza Seguerra when they were tiny tots. So, Jana would do better if she could similarly learn how to naturally surprise viewers, instead of just being proficient and nice.

For her part, Lyca is an edgy performer who’s shown by way of her “Maala-ala Mo Kaya” episode that she has the dramatic “bite” to make the problems of the characters she plays acutely real. So, why isn’t she being given her big, build-up drama series or film just yet?

If her producers wait too long, her incipient career’s momentum might get compromised, and it’ll be that much harder for her to end up as this generation’s Nora Aunor.

On “Oh My G,” new lead player Janella initially came on strong and feisty, but her performance has currently gone on a plateau of predictability that it should snap out of, soonest. Janella is also a good singer, so the show could exploit that strength, too, more quickly than perhaps initially planned.

Among this season’s current male comers, Iñigo has the “genetic” edge, but like Lyca, his career is in need of perking up, so he can build on his initial advantage.

Yes, he’s done some TV-film roles, but his impact in them hasn’t been definitive enough to mark him as a major find for all seasons and reasons. Iñigo does have a new film, “Crazy Beautiful You,” but it’s a stellar vehicle for Daniel Padilla and Kathryn Bernardo. Iñigo needs his own starrer for him to be able to stake out his stellar territory.

Fussing with hair

At a recent TV-film forum, we were asked what ticked us off the most about actresses on the small screen. We answered by asking a question in turn: “Have you ever wondered why our TV actresses ‘fix’ their hair so much and so often while in front of the cameras?”

It’s true: Many actresses, from top stars down to starlets and extras, keep fussing with their hair while performing! For some, it’s a nervous tic, a giveaway that they’re uncomfortable about acting, and are thinking, not of the character they’re assigned to play, but of themselves and how they look.

They do it in all sorts of scenes—it doesn’t matter whether it’s in a silly comedy or in a super-serious melodramatic sequence.

Aside from its being a constant nervous reflex, why do they do it? They think that stray tufts of hair impair viewers’ sight of their beautiful faces, which have to be displayed in full view all the time?

Whoever gave them that dingbat notion? In acting, what’s important is not how you look, but how deeply you feel and understand the character you’re playing. So, stop fiddling and fussing around with your darned hair!

It isn’t only irritating and distracting, it also reveals how wrong-headed your ideas about acting are. —Which is why you’re such an inept thespian, and will remain so until you discover what acting is really all about!