Why Yen almost gave up acting

As far as Dream Dad star Yen Santos is concerned, 2014 has been a very good year. Even before she wrapped up work in Pure Love — an ABS-CBN teleserye based on the Koreanovela 49 Days, in which she played the role of Ysabel Espiritu — another project was already waiting for her. That project turned out to be Dream Dad.

In the family-friendly teleserye topbilled by Zanjoe Marudo and new child wonder Jana Agoncillo, Yen plays Maribeth “Bebet” Ramos. Yen explains her character is a departure from her previous roles because it’s her first time to play a mother. “Malayo po kay Bebet yung character na ginampanan ko sa Pure Love. Ako po kasi ang magiging mother ni Jana dito.”

When Yen first met with reporters to promote Dream Dad, she was still filming the final week of her previous show. In fact, she was late to the Dream Dad grand presscon because she came from the Pure Love set, exhausted from a whole day’s work in front of the camera. But she never complained. Instead, she thanked the show’s business unit head Ginny Ocampo for giving her many opportunities to do what she loves.

“Of course, thank you to Ms. Ginny for the new work. It’s a new challenge so I’m very grateful to her and the management,” Yen told reporters during Dream Dad’s grand presscon.

Yen first came on the scene when she joined Pinoy Big Brother Teen Clash 2010. She was evicted on Day 43, and that season’s title and prizes went to James Reid, with Ryan Bang taking second place. She joined the show because she wanted to become an actress, and for a while it seemed like she would achieve that dream with hardly any trouble. Soon after her eviction, she joined Star Magic, ABS-CBN’s talent development and management arm, and was cast in Shoutout, a short-lived youth-oriented variety show.

However, Yen found it difficult to capitalize on that initial burst of heat she received at the start of her career. She was given projects to test her mettle, but as a beginner, she was unable to keep pace with her more experienced co-stars — and it showed.

She shared, “When I was starting out, there were people who didn’t believe in my talents. It seemed at first, when I came to the set, they couldn’t trust me. There was one time, they waited for hours, and yet I still couldn’t cry.”

She added, “Sobrang pinapagalitan ako nun. Naranasan ko po talaga na murahin ng ilang beses.”

Eventually, she began to reconsider her career aspirations especially when the projects stopped coming for a few months. There were also times when she would be tapped to join the cast of a new show the network was cooking up, only to be told that the project had fallen through. She and her mother argued a lot back then, with the latter telling her daughter to give up and return to their hometown of Nueva Ecija. But something told Yen to hold on.

“It crossed my mind that maybe this wasn’t for me, considering that I couldn’t even shed a tear for a scene. But when I already wanted to give up, I didn’t push through with it. It became somewhat of a challenge to me to do better, to study every role I get, to work harder on projects given to me, so crying on the set won’t be a problem anymore.”

Good thing she did, because if she had given up then, she would have missed out on Pure Love, the project that transformed her into a bona fide actress. (A handful of successful appearances on the long-running drama anthology Maalaala Mo Kaya boosted Yen’s credibility and stock in the industry, too.) And if she hadn’t been able to prove herself on that show, then the Kapamilya network’s top brass probably wouldn’t have seen fit to put her in Dream Dad especially opposite someone like Zanjoe.

“Of course, it’s an honor,” Yen says of the chance to work with Zanjoe, who has made a name for himself as one of the Kapamilya network’s prime leading men. “Talagang malaki na po yung pangalan niya sa industriya. I am happy to be working with him.”

But although Yen has had her big break already and is well on her way to being named a prime artist of the network, she wants to keep growing as an actress by learning more about her craft. “There’s so much to learn. In acting, learning is continuous. Every day, you have to study it and learn from it.”