the woman
THE ENDEARINGLY CANDID RUFFA GUTIERREZ SHOWS US YET ANOTHER SIDE OF HER
RUFFA GUTIERREZ IS NOT JUST A WOMAN. She is the woman. The kind whose oft glamorous physicality may intimidate at first, but give it a few minutes and you will quickly realize that Ruffa is a woman’s woman. In her most recent cover for MEGA, the endearingly candid beauty queen, actress and host talks about making movies that make her feel young again, the excitement and stress that comes with working with family on reality TV, her theory on the Internet, single motherhood and walking down the aisle again.
Ruffa Gutierrez may be a celebrity of a certain strata, but she’s neither temperamental nor haughty. She’s simply a charismatic figure with a larger than life personality. We begin the filmed interview with a poised figure talking about her current projects. “I’m doing a movie; actually it was just shown last…” she takes a moment to pause. “Teka muna nakikita kasi ako, hindi ako sanay na may video,” she interrupts herself amusingly. “Okay, take two!”
As of press time, Ruffa just finished filming Maybe This Time with Sarah Geronimo and Coco Martin. “It’s a beautiful, unique story. Rom-com with light drama… They said it was going to be a unique love triangle. Sarah, Coco and Ruffa? O sige, nakakabagets. Game!” she says with much excitement. In the film she plays Sarah’s boss and mentor Monica, a role which she can only describe to us as challenging. Whether she plays the rival or cupid to two young lovers, we have yet to find out. As for working with Sarah and Coco, Ruffa only has good things to say about the pair. “I love working with them. They’re very professional. Sarah is one of the best actresses of her generation…And Coco is very pilyo, [but] professional as well. They’re both very effective actors. It’s an honor for me to work with them.”
Aside from doing movies, Ruffa is also busy working on It Takes Gutz to be A Gutierrez, which is set to air this month. Produced by One MEGA Group’s TV 100 under the leadership of Mike Carandang and the Gutierrezes, the actress says it is a dream come true to be the first Asian family to have a reality show on an international network like E! So how is it like working with the whole gang on-screen? “It’s one big exciting experience and at the same time very stressful because we have a lot of very fierce, very strong personalities,” she shares. “I realized we’re not the same people we were five, ten years ago. Everyone’s grown up, you know? I used to take care of Richard and Raymond. I used to change their diapers. Now, they’re not little boys anymore. They have their own lives, one is getting married,” she reveals. But despite being a permanent fixture in the limelight, Ruffa still values the little privacy she has left. “I have grown up in front of the cameras and I’ve been in this industry since I was 13. My life is an open book and as much as I want to hide things, I can only hide so much because you know, my mom talks a lot. And I talk a lot,” she says in jest. “[But] I still believe that each and every one of us has a public life, a personal life and a secret life. It’s basically about how well you manage a situation.”
Ruffa, however, is anything but shy on the subject of single motherhood. “Nowadays, there’s a lot of families that only have single working moms or fathers so it’s not anymore a new situation.” And we couldn’t agree more. A woman who can hold her own and brave any trying situation is always admirable. “I just told them the truth that [their] mom and dad are not married anymore,” she says, recounting how she explained the circumstances to her children. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s better that you tell them than they read it in the magazines, and they have read it in the magazines…You just have to make sure that they’re well-equipped; that they know which is the truth, which is gossip and which is not true.” A proud single parent, she makes sure she has time for everything—her daughters Lorin and Venice, work (“which is what takes care of [them] because my husband, sorry my ex-husband, doesn’t really send me anything,” she says, laughing), and herself. Ruffa may be estranged from her husband, but she’s not reluctant about the kids having a relationship with their father. “If he comes around and he wants to visit them, then why not? He can come visit them anytime, but if he doesn’t we’re okay,” she says. Besides, she’s more than happy that she’s blessed with friends and family who shower her kids with the love and care they need.
Now when it comes to finding love and walking down the aisle again, Ruffa has changed her once disillusioned state of mind. It seems that like most of us, she is still enchanted by the idea of a happily ever after. “You know a few years ago I said ‘No, I don’t want to get married again.’ I would just rather have a boyfriend and when things don’t work out, you go your separate ways and that’s it,” she says. “But this year, four of my friends got married and I was, ‘Aww, I want to get married again…’ I want to have my happy ending, too. And I want it to be blessed…I want to have a family again, you know.”
In the meantime, while still single, Ruffa is enjoying the little free time she has traveling and learning new things. In fact, she just recently finished a three weekslong course on Secret and Spies, Modern Espionage and Intelligence at King’s College in London. The course, which she says is about media, the Internet and espionage, the Cold War and 9/11, was something that piqued her interest. “It also talks about how we can’t hide from anyone. Anything that you say, anything that you put on your phone online, it’s out there…You think you’re online alone chatting with someone, but there are ten other people watching,” she says with conviction.
“I want to have my happy ending, too. And I want it to be blessed…I want to have a family again, you know”
And that is exactly what makes her such a fascinating personality, her unexpected preferences.
Ruffa is not all about the glamour or life in the spotlight. She also finds time to give back through her foundation for less fortunate children, the Roof-A-Child Foundation. “I love helping people…Sometimes we don’t announce it, sometimes we help and ask others to give in any way that they can by doing a fundraiser,” she explains. “I’ve also instilled these values in my children because I want them to start early. I want them to know, ‘You have a blessed life, not everyone has the life that you have.’”
With over 20 years of experience in the entertainment industry (not to mention her occasional dabbling in other fields, like fashion), countless magazines covers and endorsements, and a highly anticipated international reality TV show, Ruffa Gutierrez is a true showbiz royalty. But with each encounter, we realize that while it feels so natural for her to be the focus of media attention, Ruffa is a real woman. She may be fiercely outspoken and unafraid to be herself, but like most of us, she occasionally gets self-conscious in unexpected situations. She still believes in love that can last a lifetime, even though she has gone through heartbreak and sorrow. She has both money and fame, but nothing is more important to her than family and her two daughters. That is the Ruffa Guttierez we’ve come to know—a woman with vulnerabilities, but fearless in every sense of the word. Now that’s our kind of MEGA woman.