Tae-Kwon-Do champion and film star (he starred in more than three-dozen movies until he decided to become a politician) Monsour del Rosario is harnessing the relationship he built in the last decade or so with show business as he takes up the movies again.
In 2010, he was elected councilor in Makati and re-elected on 2013. In 2015, he upped his ante in politics. He ran and won a seat in Congress representing the first district of Makati.
In those years, show business has been luring him back, but Del Rosario had been very discriminating, always thinking the image he has as a public servant.
“FPJ’s Ang Probinsyano called me twice, first to offer me a part as Congressman, but I didn’t accept it after learning the role was that of a protector of a drug lord. No, I can’t play that because I know that the audience (or most of them) can’t discern the role the actor plays onscreen from his off-screen persona. The second time, the show was offering me a role of chief of police. I got a bit excited having in mind PNP Chief Director General Ronald ‘Bato’ de la Rosa, but again the role was the chief was the protector of the Congressman who protects the drug lord in the series. So, I said ‘no.’”
Yet, when he was offered the role of a martial arts master who trains a green horn to fight in The Trigonal, he couldn’t say, “no.”
“When it was offered to me I’d be the lead star. But my work in Congress was the problem. I work Monday to Thursday and I can only shoot on weekends. So I asked the producers to just give me a supporting role. So that’s how Ian Ignacio became the lead star of the film. Well, I’m glad because Ian, son of Levi Ignacio who is also in the movie, had been my student in martial arts,” he said over lunch at Romulo Café in Quezon City recently.
Ian is an actor in theater and has a black belt in Tae-Kwon-Do, though he has yet to equal the feat of his instructor, an Olympic medalist and a Sports Hall of Fame awardee. Recently, Del Rosario was the first non-Korean named Tae-Kwon-Do Man of the Year.
In The Trigonal, Del Rosario plays Sensei Mike Vasquez, a martial arts master.
“Ian Ignacio trained under me at the Olympians Taekwondo Training Center with my partner Stephen Fernandez. I recommended him to the director for the role in the film,” Del Rosario said.
Only nine-years old when he started training in Martial Arts (“because I was bullied in school”), Del Rosario was also fascinated by Chinese Kung Fu movies, especially those that starred Bruce Lee. “I still have the videos, hahaha,” he said.
His first martial arts instructor was Joe Lopez-Vito, a Tang Soo Dok/Moo Duk Kwan practitioner. He shifted to Tae-Kwon-Do in 1977 under Sung Chon Hong when he moved to Manila for his high school years, and later joined the Phiilippine National Team in 1982.
He was introduced to the movie audience in 1986 in a small role in Gabi na Kumander with Phillip Salvador and Dindo Fernando. In 2006 he appeared in Tatlong Baraha with Lito Lapid and then he found himself involved in politics.
Although his real film comeback is called Blood Hunters: Rise of the Hybrid also directed by Vincent Soberano, The Trigonal, which opens on Sept. 26, marks his official movie homecoming.
“We’re aiming for The Blood Hunters to be part of this year’s Metro Manila Film Festival,” Del Rosario said.
Meanwhile, Congressman Monsour del Rosario has been named Chef de Mision of the Southeast Asian Games in Manila in November 2019.
Jane Fonda in 5 acts
Girl next door, sex kitten, activist, fitness tycoon: Oscar®-winner Jane Fonda has lived a life marked by controversy, tragedy and transformation, and she’s done it all in the public eye. Directed and produced by award-winning documentarian Susan Lacy, Jane Fonda In Five Acts, an intimate look at her singular journey, debuts same time as the U.S. on Sept. 25 at 8:00 a.m. exclusively on HBO GO.
Jane Fonda has been vilified as Hanoi Jane, lusted after as Barbarella and heralded as a beacon of the women’s movement. This film goes to the heart of what she really is, a blend of deep vulnerability, magnetism, naiveté and bravery, revealing a life transformed over time.
The documentary draws on 21 hours of interviews with Fonda, who speaks candidly about her life and her missteps. She explores the pain of her mother’s suicide, her father’s emotional unavailability, 30 years of an eating disorder and three marriages to highly visible, yet diametrically opposed, men. Jane Fonda In Five Acts also includes interviews with family and friends, as well as rare home movies and verité footage of the 80-year-old Fonda’s busy life today at, as she puts it, “the beginning of my last act.”
Where “girls” of her generation were raised to be passive and compliant, Fonda has always seemed like very much “her own woman.” But her memories reveal the extent to which she was defined and controlled by the desires, ambitions, and fortunes of the powerful men in her life, and how much her own secret insecurities, unresolved anxieties and impulsive actions often prevented her from being the person she aspired to be.
Featuring interviews with Robert Redford, Lily Tomlin, producer Paula Weinstein and former spouses Tom Hayden and Ted Turner, among others, the first four acts of Fonda’s life are named after the four men who shared – and hugely influenced – her personal and professional ambitions. The fifth act is named after Fonda herself, as she finally confronts her demons, reconnects with her family and resumes a successful career as both an actress and an activist, entirely on her own terms.
Fonda recalls growing up “in the shadow of a national monument” in the form of her father, Henry. One of the most beloved actors of his time, the elder Fonda was a distant father in private, neglecting his family and having an affair while her mother descended into mental anguish that led to tragedy.
Fonda’s name and good looks brought her modeling gigs and a chance to study acting with Lee Strasberg, but “it never felt real,” she recalls. She impulsively went to France to experience the cinematic revolution of the French New Wave, and married director Roger Vadim, agreeing to live a “heady and hedonistic” life and reluctantly allowing herself to become a sex object with films like Barbarella.
Today, still challenging herself creatively and still active politically, Jane Fonda continues to demonstrate that there is no limit to the possibilities in a life full of self-determination, honesty and hard work.
