Once Mon Confiado takes on a role, be it big or small, he gives it his all.
With over 400 movie credits to date since he started romancing the art of being an actor, Confiado continues to fly high in the only profession that he has given his entire being to.
“Acting is the core of my life,” he told us in a brief chat recently. “Perhaps it is true what they say, that acting is also in my genes.” His father, Angel Confiado, was a character actor for many decades, and worked with some of the best in the local film industry.
“My mother was barely in her teens when she met my father, who was already almost a senior citizen then. I was the result of their wonderful, albeit very discreet, love affair,” Confiado shared.
His late father would pass by for him during film shoots. “It was only during his shoots when I could bond with my father, and I cherished all those times that I would be on the set, almost always wide-eyed as he worked on his many roles. Little did I know that it was the beginning of my own initiation into acting,” he added.
Showbiz insiders all know that Confiado has mastered the art of “method acting,” a technique actors use to “become” the characters they portray, and to fully and emotionally identify with their roles. “I watch a lot of films, observe and study how the great actors give life to their characters. I apply these lessons to the roles that my manager and I choose to accept. I always aim to be my character and lose myself in the process. That is my gauge—when I no longer am myself and I move, speak and feel like the one I am portraying. That is when I am most fulfilled.”
The legendary Russian actor-director Konstantin Stanislavski once said that there are no small parts, only small actors. Confiado’s latest work in GMA’s Legal Wives is a testament of this. He accepted a guest role, which would have required him to work for only one straight week, but pandemic struck and schedules went awry. When work was eventually resumed, the series had to hurdle exacting challenges that caused so many changes in the work schedules.
Confiado had to give up one new TV series and two film projects because he was committed to the show. “As an actor, you win some, you lose some—that holds true especially these days when locked-in shoots and working in a bubble over a certain period of time are the new ways of working. But it should also continuously inspire us to give only our very best despite the many limitations of this new normal way of working for TV or film.”
Confiado has wrapped up an HBO Asia series under Erik Matti and is currently working on a new project with producer-actor Arjo Atayde in Baguio. He has also finished his scenes for a musical film under the direction of Vince Tañada. Confiado recently signed a deal to be the celebrity endorser of Barandilya Restarant and in a few weeks, he will start preparing for another meaty role in a historical biopic, also to be directed by Matti.
It just goes to show that despite the pandemic, Mon Confiado continues to take the right steps an actor, highly touted and much sought-after because of who he is, how he works, the way he inspires, and the consistent high standard of output he brings to every project.
