If at first you don’t succeed…

Liza Soberano

Empoy Marquez’s belated ascent to stardom via the sleeper hit, “Kita Kita,” has affirmed the veracity and “delayed power” of the saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.”

Far too many impatient starlets quit after just one year of trying to make it in the biz, feeling shocked and insulted that “the industry” has taken so long in taking cognizance of their obvious stellar “K.”

But, obvious to whom? To their ever-loving mothers or “momagers,” to be sure—but can’t they come up with more objective supporters of their claim that they’re God’s gift to the stellar show biz scene?

After all, literally hundreds of young and not-so-young hopefuls storm the gates of show biz each year, so why should starlets feel that they stand out in that mad and maddening crowd?

Unless they have a million bucks to spend on a “blitzkrieg” promo campaign, they’ll just have to invest the time needed for industry bigwigs to realize that they have what it takes to move up, from starlet to star—in the show biz gods’ sweet time.

Take Liza Soberano. She’s show biz’s darling du jour at 19—but, an old audition video clip reveals that she first started trying to appear in potentially career-launching commercials at only age 13!

She was already exceptionally pert and pretty even then, but her first auditioners still didn’t bite! It’s really that time-consuming.

Fact is, Liza did almost make it some years ago starting with bit roles in soap series, followed by supporting parts in movies topbilled by Daniel Padilla and Bea Alonzo.

She didn’t quite set the screen on fire, so she had to wait some more—until 2014, when her lead pairing with Enrique Gil finally clicked with viewers in the hit TV rom-com, “Forevermore.”

By some observers’ reckoning, that was the third time that her studio had tried to boost her career to stellar level.

If Liza had lost heart after all those years of waiting, that breakthrough “moment” wouldn’t have happened.

Liza then proceeded to sustain her career’s upward ascendancy with “Dolce Amore.”

On the big screen, she’s chalked up some lead portrayals—but, her biggest break is yet to come, in Erik Matti’s “Darna,” where she’ll be playing the much-coveted title role.

So, all of you hundreds of hopeful and antsy starlets out there, take heart from Empoy and Liza’s “protracted” success stories—but underline “protracted,” because it often takes a lot of time and patient talent development to make it big in the biz.

The worst fate in show biz is not to become a has-been, it’s ending up as—a “never-was”!