Taking a break–and making it in the biz again

John Lloyd Cruz

Most starlets and stars are in the biz to stay—and to maximize their earning and drawing power for the longest possible term.

Of late, however, some show biz stars have been doing the unthinkable, and calling it (temporarily) quits—like Andi Eigenmann and John Lloyd Cruz. What gives?

In Andi’s case, she says she wants to focus on taking care of her 5-year-old daughter. As for John Lloyd, some observers opine that he’s been working too hard and too long, and needs to rest and recharge his creative batteries.

Others more subjectively speculate that he’s developed some not so desirable habitual preferences or dependencies that he has to wean himself away from, before they affect his career—so, he should be given the time and space to do exactly that.

Thus, instead of raising their eyebrows and playing the blame game, onlookers should support his not self-serving but self-saving move—and wish him well!

As for other show biz denizens who’ve occasionally opted to take a long-delayed and well-deserved break, they include many starlets and stars who have been “obliged” to become the breadwinners, not just of their impoverished families, but of their lazily dependent clans!

Some of them are mere children, and yet they work long hours and have “forgotten” how it is to be carefree kids, just so they can pull their
loved ones out of the quicksand of poverty.

Unfortunately, some of their relatives have become so complacent and dependent on them that they don’t do any work at all! So, the poor, juvenile breadwinners can’t be blamed if they take a good, long rest from the show biz rat race for a while, just to teach them a lesson they need to learn.

Other hardworking luminaries in need of a good, long break are stars who have been working so continuously that they’ve begun to repeat themselves and have lost their creative bite and edge.

To illustrate: Some years ago, a popular star asked us for advice on how to keep his career from going blah, and we candidly told him that his movie performances had in fact already become predictable and knee-jerk, because he had been so busy going from one big project to the next that he had already depleted his creative “capital.”

Bothered and bewildered, the star asked us what he could do to build up his thespic capital again, and we urged him to take a well-deserved break from his workaholic and enormously profitable career, to “fill in the blanks.”

And, how could he do that? We advised him to pay attention to his personal relationships, travel, reflect, reevaluate, go into new hobbies and adventures—and just take a good, long time off—to “smell the roses.”

Surprisingly, the star followed our advice—and he was happy to see that, when he
got back to performing much later, he did have a fresh
pool of creativity and empathy to draw from, and his portrayals were no longer bland and predictable.

Would that other overworked and artistically “depleted” stars also did themselves that big and necessary favor!