Close to home
For Sylvia Sanchez, her latest project, The Greatest Love, is close to home. She is a mother of four, and her character Gloria has the same number of children.
“The Greatest Love is a family drama,” Sylvia explains. “This is the story of a mother’s struggle to keep her family going.”
According to the veteran actress, the role of Gloria in The Greatest Love is her heaviest and most demanding to date. She has been in the business for many years, and it was only when she began working on this show that she found herself needing some extra time to compose herself before taping a scene.
“This show is unique. This is my first time to experience where while preparing a scene I am already crying. The scenes are emotionally heavy,” Sylvia says.
Noted journalist, playwright and screenwriter Ricky Lee serves as the show’s creative manager, and Sylvia says Ricky took great pains to make sure that her character’s journey will be an accurate reflection of what mothers and their children go through these days.
Ricky and the creative team wrote a heartwarming, multi-layered story. They hope that as it unfolds on TV screens everywhere, the Kapamilya viewers will learn a thing or two about what it means to be a mother in this day and age — and realize mothers know best.
“In The Greatest Love, people will see the one thing Gloria wants her children to know is that she does not want her children to experience what she has been through,” she says. “She is selfless. She wants to give everything that she can to her children.”
As a parent, Sylvia is similarly devoted to her own children Arjo, Ria, Gela and Xavi. Of the four, only Arjo and Ria are in showbiz. Sylvia wants them to find happiness and success, but she’s fine with having a little rain fall into their lives as well. Sylvia, a self-confessed reformed party girl, credits her children with helping her get on the straight and narrow.
“I want my children to succeed. But they need to experience hardship to be solid and strong. Before I became a mother, I partied and drank alcohol. But everything changed when the children came. I stopped drinking,” she admits.
“When my children already have families of their own, I know they would be thankful of all the things they learned from me even if I was not the perfect mother.”
The Greatest Love marks Sylvia’s first time to play a lead role in a teleserye. She’s used to playing supporting roles, so when she learned that her character is the show’s bida, she got emotional. When asked what she thinks she did to deserve a break like this at this point in her career, she puts it down to her attitude on set.
“I am professional. The older I get, the more I study because as an actor, I want to learn. I love everyone on the set from the boss down to the utility. And most of all, I love my job.”
Sylvia may have devoted a lot of love to her craft, but she says her husband Art Atayde is still her greatest love. “I am thankful for all the blessings. But my husband knows that if he asks me to stop working in showbiz, I will stop. But he has not told me so. He has been very supportive of me from the time I entered showbiz in 1989,” she says.