At 29, and despite a 10-year career in show business, Matteo Guidicelli’s image has been so clean, it seems it’s had two cycles in the wash and a lick of peroxide. His appeal has also been more boy-next-door than badass, despite a run of interests fueled by testosterone. He likes speed. And, apparently, falling out of planes from very high places—he’s completed motorcycle courses with highway police, and skydived over Bulacan with Scout Rangers. He loves cars enough to have raced them—and as a recent social media controversy has shown, he loves his country enough to have joined an intensive training course with a hardcore military unit.
Guidicelli’s career has been as unpredictable as July weather, but thankfully, more prone to sunshine than sudden rain. His job descriptions have run the range from kart racer at 11, showbiz newbie at 14, showbiz steady at 18, to professional singer in his early 20s. And from then to now, the projects haven’t stopped coming. “I went to the States [for college], I spent two and a half years there. And then I was offered by Star Magic to come home. I was so hungry to work already,” he says. He got his first break under legendary star-maker Johnny Manahan in 2011.This came by way of his first primetime show, starring opposite Andi Eigenmann in the fantasy-romance Agua Bendita; he appeared in the hugely popular My Binondo Girl, and in the 2016 primetime ratings-buster, Dolce Amore. He’s also proven he can hit a sweet falsetto whether in concert or on an eponymous album launched in 2016. “I guess every year, doors open, new opportunities open, and it’s all unplanned—it’s never planned. Just go—enter these doors and new blessings and new opportunities appear.”
Objectively speaking, it’s hard for doors to not open for Matteo—he’s a winning combination of man and child, his two-day stubble flecking a soft jaw with grown-up seriousness. His eyes can shift from military focus to guilty mischief before he finishes a single sentence. He shows up on time for interviews, and refers to his interviewer as ma’am. He also willingly renders, and helpfully defines, that one occupational requirement for every successful star in the business: He connects. “One reason why I love the industry is because we get to connect with people,” he says. “When you’re in the mall, somebody smiles, you smile back. It changes their aura. You can make people happy.”
