Jay Manalo

Jay Manalo (1973-    ) is a famous actor of Pinoy cinema and television and former male model.

He was born in Saigon, South Vietnam on January 30, 1973 to a Vietnamese mother and a Filipino father.  His father was originally from Manila and was based in Saigon during the Vietnam War working as a musician.  Shortly after his birth, Jay and his parents left Vietnam to resettle in his father's native Manila, Philippines.  At age five, Jay's parents divorced.  His mother remarried to a US Navy serviceman and moved to the United States, followed by his father leaving the Philippines to work overseas for a number a years.  Jay grew up in Manila and was then raised primarily by his paternal grandmother.  After an absence of more than a decade, Jay was finally reunited with both of his parents while he was in his twenties during the early 1990s.

Blessed with good looks, Jay Manalo began modeling while still a teenager.  After placing first runner up in the Philippines' national SM Man of the Year competition, casting agents in the Pinoy film and television industry began to take notice of the newcomer male model.  In 1994, Jay Manalo landed his first acting role in the action film, Brat Pack.  For his next two films, Urban Rangers (1995) and Paracale Gang (1996), he would be cast in the lead roles.  Despite a sizable fan base he had acquired in a short period of time with his first three films, Jay Manalo didn't find his niche until he won the lead role in the romantic film, Gayuma (1996).  This image of him as the sexy leading man on the big screen would continue to flourish with another well-received romantic film, Totoy Mola (1996).  By the latter part of the 1990s decade, Jay Manalo had become a bonafied heartthrob of Pinoy Cinema and a major male sex symbol of the Philippines and all of Asia.

Among his most popular films on the big screen also include Sabong (1998), Bayad Puri (1998), Prosti (2002) for which he won an URIAN award for best actor, Ang Huling Birhen Sa Lupa (2003) for which he won for best actor at the Manila Film Festival Awards, Bayaran (2004) for which he won a FAMAS award for best actor and Aishite Imasu 1941:  Mahal Kita (2004) for which he won for best supporting actor at the Metro Manila Film Festival Awards.

Jay Manalo's television acting career had officially started in 1997 when he appeared on the top rated soap series in the Philippines, Mula Sa Puso.  Of his television acting credits, he is mostly known as the lead actor on the 2005 ABS-CBN soap opera, Vietnam Rose.  

In 2007, Jay Manalo was arrested and taken into custody at the Ninoy Acquino International Airport in Manila just minutes after he had boarded Philippine Airlines flight that was about to take off and head toward Palawan.  Apparently, he had told a flight attendant that he was carrying a bomb inside his backpack right before boarding.  But what was intended only as a joke somehow was misconstrued.  In the end, the prosecutor found Manalo's joking to be of no malicious intentions but just in poor taste.

Link(s):

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