Every year, Esquire Philippines’ Man at His Best honors extraordinary Filipinos who are reshaping society. These are the men and women who are raising the bar for Filipino creatives, public servants, and professionals.
This year, we’re celebrating eight mavericks and living legends in film, music, business, politics, and entertainment. From National Artists Ricky Lee and Kidlat Tahimik to Mayor Joy Belmonte and tycoon Ramon Ang, here are the 2023 honorees who exemplify what it means to be a Man at His Best.
Meet Esquire's Actor of the Year, Piolo Pascual
I've just become more grateful for the things that come my way—in terms of work, in terms of the things that I could still do in this business.
I'm a sucker for good stories. When you give me or offer me or pitch me something that I can't resist, I'll make sure I'll make it happen. I'll make sure to find a way to squeeze it into my schedule.
Being in this business, I'm privileged to be given a chance to explore: to be able to get myself out of my comfort zone, get myself out of my shell, and try other things. Being in this business for quite a while has helped me become more comfortable in my own skin knowing and thinking that I can probably take on some stuff that I've not done before. At the same time, I want to be able to grow.
Before I reached 40, I thought I'd already hit the glass ceiling in terms of the roles that I was taking on because, of course, you're an exclusive talent of a network. They're the ones that tell you what to do and what roles to take on. That's when I felt that I was doing one soap after another and one movie after another—a lot of things simultaneously happening. I thought I already hit the glass ceiling in terms of the roles that I could portray. And, little did I know, after I hit my 40s, I was like 'How could I even think that' or 'How could I even limit myself'? There are still a lot of roles that I could possibly take on.
There's so much stuff that we can do because of the emergence of streaming platforms. They demand so much content from a lot of providers and producers. The playing field has become more open and the content creation has become more diverse. For me, it's a... I don't want to say it's a task, I don't want to say it's a job, or it's your responsibility. But yeah, it's a privilege to be able to take on roles and keep on growing as an artist.
You want to be able to, not just reinvent yourself, but really just get out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself to do something you haven't done before. That's where my passion is coming from. That's where my excitement is being drawn from, knowing that this is something I can probably do, not knowing the outcome, but at least I took it on because it got me out of my comfort zone. It challenged me and it made me grow.
[Spring Films] has been around for almost 15 years as a film production company. We started out with Kimmy Dora, the three-part series, and what we really wanted was to show an alternative to the cinema that we see, the mainstream cinema. We wanted to be a little edgy but not film noir, not the kind of indie film that not a lot of people get to watch. So, we still wanted to be achievable, we still wanted to be in that mode wherein people can take it, people don't have to sit in and not know what they're watching. I wanted to be reachable, I wanted something that people can relate to.
Of course, you want your film to be seen by a lot of people. Being in the business for quite some time, starting out as an actor and now as a content creator and a producer, I'm able to delve into stuff that I cannot do as an actor, but as a producer, I can because there are a lot of investors who are interested to produce and to try it out. Having my Spring Films as a baby, as a platform for me to exercise my knowledge in terms of filmmaking. We're able to not just shortlist, but also compress the list of films that we can take on and make sure that it's not all mainstream, not all romcoms, or it's not all predictable.
We gear toward content that hopefully will change a person's outlook in life.
I have so much respect for cinema. That's why you always want to push the envelope. You always want to give them something that is a treat, that is a delight. The last film I did, The Ride, we expanded from a small scope. I told my partner Erickson Raymundo from Cornerstone, 'This has so much potential. Let's expand it. Let's make it bigger in terms of perspective' and that's what we did.
I take it upon myself to come up with something decent enough to be watched by a lot of people, not just from the Philippines but to be able to showcase it to a bigger global market around the world.
