Dolly de Leon reflects on navigating fame after ‘Triangle of Sadness’ success | ABS-CBN

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Dolly de Leon reflects on navigating fame after ‘Triangle of Sadness’ success

Dolly de Leon reflects on navigating fame after ‘Triangle of Sadness’ success

Toff C.

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Dolly de Leon took a trip down memory lane and recalled the experience the moment she had her breakthrough in the Oscar-nominated film Triangle of Sadness.

"That was really wild, crazy. It was insane," she said in a one-on-one chat with Request sa Radyo fellow headliner Lea Salonga uploaded in the State of the Arts YouTube channel.

Dolly recounted that her life as an actress was way different before she starred in Triangle of Sadness.

"I was used to being invisible in the industry. People call me the day before the shoot. 'Available ka ba bukas? Call time niyo 4AM.' 'Okay, game!' That was my life and my life was playing characters sometimes with no names. Mga tipong judge, doctor, no name characters. And saying yes to every offer, that was my life," she shared.

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Dolly recalled that doing Triangle of Sadness was very fulfilling creatively.

"The creative process was so fulfilling there. Because the director, Ruben Östlund, really gave us all room to explore, and give suggestions, and collaborate truly with him," she shared.

"And when I got home [in the Philippines], and it was the pandemic when I got home, I was terrified because what I'm gonna do now? There are no plays. There's nothing. I'm gonna go back doing these nameless parts again. I would just cry almost every night for like every three days because it was so hard to let go of something like that, of a process like that," she admitted.

Fast forward to a year later, Triangle of Sadness was released, and Dolly was catapulted to international fame and recognition following her performance.

"It exploded and all of the noise happened. It was wild," the actress recalled.

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On how she coped with the attention she was receiving, the actress relayed that her conversations with her friends from theater helped her navigate her newfound fame.

"I think one way of coping that I did was I called and got in touch with my friends who were already very successful at that point because in my batch of theater students, all of them were flying high. All of them were successful. I was the only one still struggling so by the time that was happening to me, everyone already knew what I was feeling so it was easy to just call them and say, 'Uy ano ba 'to guys? It's crazy what's happening," she said.

Dolly confessed that it took a while to "absorb what was happening" following the release of Triangle of Sadness. She admitted: "I was resisting it at the beginning. I really didn't like the attention."

She added: "I felt like, oh this is so showbiz. Can I just act? Gusto ko lang umarte bakit kailangan ng ganito, ganyan?"

Eventually, she came into terms with the fact that her job now goes beyond the corners of the set.

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"It took me about a year and a half to finally just come to terms with okay, this is really how it works. This is the business. The job doesn't end on set. After that, you have to do a lot of other things," she said.

The actress remarked that she also realized that the attention she was receiving was a gift.

"I realized I shouldn't be resisting it. This is actually a gift but kasi it happened to me in my 50s so I was not accustomed to that," she stated.

She went on: "It was only now that I'm more comfortable in my own skin and I'm just accepting. [Sabi nila], 'Di ba Dolly ito 'yung gusto mo to do more meaningful and relevant work?' And sometimes with success, you get to choose what to do which I never had a choice ever on anything that I did. But now I do so now I've come to terms with it.”

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