Coleen Garcia Goes More Daring In 'Ex With Benefits' & 'Pasion De Amor' After Her Acclaimed Bad Girl Role In "#Y"

COLEEN GARCIA is now better known as Billy Crawford’s girlfriend, especially after she defended him from bashers when he had a sad encounter with the Taguig police. But she will soon come into her own and no longer identified as just someone else’s girl. Her appearance in the Cinemalaya entry “#Y” (pronounced Hashtag Y) was noticed by ABS-CBN bigwigs and has opened doors for her.

She’s now playing the lead role no less in a new movie opposite Sam Milby, “Ex with Benefits”, and also in a new soap, “Pasion de Amor”, where she shares topbilling with Ellen Adarna, Jake Cuenca and Arci Munoz. Also, Star Cinema is distributing “#Y” on regular theatrical release and you’ll now get the chance to witness Coleen’s career-defining performance as a very bad girl.

“Actually, that role was not meant for me but for Sophie Albert,” she says. “My original role was that of the good girl, na siyang napunta kay Sophie. But when I read the script, yung character niya, ang daming kissing scenes and, this being my first movie, I felt hindi pa ako ready. So I asked our director, Gino Santos, if we could switch roles. Buti pumayag naman siya.”

It’s good Billy allowed her to play the offbeat bad girl role. “I made him read the script and he said, are you sure you’re willing to do this? But after watching the movie in its premiere, he congratulated me and said he’s happy with my performance. Actually, kinakabahan talaga ako kasi we were with my parents, who are both conservative. So worried ako baka hindi nila magustuhan yung role ko, which is so not me kasi I’m made to speak foul language, which I don’t do. But my dad also congratulated me, so I felt relieved.”

The movie is about the so-called Generation Y. Direk Gino Santos’ first movie, “The Animals”, was about high school students, called Gen X. This time, the character Coleen and her co-stars (Elmo Magalona, Kit Thompson and Sophie Albert) play are rich college students who are portrayed as so wild and carefree, but feeling alienated and depressed. Does she think young people today are really like that?

“I think it’s an accurate depiction of Gen Y. I have friends who are like that and they think the movie is not exaggerating but portraying them in an exact manner. They’re the generation heavily influenced by today’s technology and social media, who believe in YOLO or ‘you only live once’ so might as well just enjoy it.”

“#Y” opens in theatres on Wednesday, December 10, as part of Star Cinema’s 20th anniversary presentation.