One by one they left this world, but they also left us their lasting legacy, larger-than-life showbiz headliners who made final headlines with their passing, some of them tragically.
In February, Mr. and Mrs. Gene Hackman were found dead in their home. At year end, Mr. and Mrs. Rob Reiner were found murdered in their Brentwood residence in Los Angeles.
The year 2025 also saw the passing of Ricky Davao and brother Bing Davao, Hajji Alejandro, Claudia Cardinale, Joan Plowright, and Diane Ladd, among others.
So high is this year’s count I’ll have to focus only on those who made a huge impression on me.
It was a year before the pandemic when we caught a screening of Sakada at UP Film Center. Produced in 1976 and directed by Behn Cervantes, Sakada was written by Lualhati Bautista from a story by Oscar Miranda. The film sheds light on the plight of our farmers in an oppressive feudal system.
I mention Sakada because we lost two of the film’s glamorous stars this year. Gloria Romero passed away in January. She played the elegant wife of the nefarious landlord. The death of Rosa Rosal, cast as the farmer’s wife, followed in November. It was as if these two legends, both in their 90s, had bookended a year of many celebrity deaths.
Rosa Rosal, at first, seemed a wrong choice for the part. Her radiant face showed no trace of suffering. She was an impoverished farmer’s wife with stereotypical Caucasian features. But then the story is set in Negros, the feudal land of mestizos, and she did give a sterling performance.
An uppity classmate asked Rosa Rosal if donating blood was tax deductible. She answered, ‘What’s your tax number?’
She was even more impressive off-camera and toiling in the real world. I encountered her ages ago when I was in high school. She was visiting our campus to promote her blood donation drive on behalf of Red Cross. She knew how to handle such cynical high school sophomores like us. An uppity classmate asked her if donating blood was tax deductible. She answered that silly question with a razor-sharp question: “What’s your tax number?”
I can’t recall what she said in her speech but she ultimately won us over. She left us wishing she was our teacher in biology. Several years later, I got to interview her when I was writing for a broadsheet. She spoke with so much enthusiasm. She knew how to tell a story, and she held my hand as she told it. She was so warm she was like everybody’s favorite aunt.
I never had the pleasure of meeting Gloria Romero, but I admire her nonetheless for the variety of roles she essayed. Having played First Lady Imelda Marcos, she seemed destined to play beautifully coiffed ladies for the rest of her career. However, she went the opposite route. She was an aswang in Darna, and later on a sinister leader of a crime syndicate. She also most memorably played the alcoholic landlady Minerva of Tayuman Street in the sitcom Palibhasa Lalake.
In 2009, she starred in Kamoteng Kahoy. Directed by Maryo J. delos Reyes, the film was inspired by actual events. I felt Gloria Romero, like Rosa Rosal in Sakada, looked too aristocratic to play Lola Idang, a sidewalk vendor selling home-made cassava cake in a remote barrio. Lola Idang is beloved by her customers composed mostly of school children. Tragedy strikes when several of them die of food poisoning. Lola Idang is blamed and ostracized.
Any doubts I had about Gloria Romero’s casting vanished when the shunned lola visits the graves of the children. In one of the most heart-rending scenes ever put to film, she breaks down in tears as she mourns the victims and wails in despair over the accusations made against her.
Both Gloria Romero and Rosa Rosal had a remarkable power of persuasion. They may have seemed miscast in those films but eventually they made us believe otherwise.
Sadly, Delia Razon, a contemporary of theirs, also passed away in 2025. At the height of her stardom, she typically played the good girl to Rosa Rosal’s vixen. It was just early this year when I saw her in a film, also at the University of the Philippines Film Center. It was a gothic horror called Haplos. As the overprotective aunt of Vilma Santos, Razon was in fine form. Her scenes were a nostalgic respite from the creepy events in the story. Haplos director Jose Antonio Reyes made a slow-burn film that relies more on atmosphere and less on jump scares, a rarity in Philippine cinema.
The first two Superman movies starring Christopher Reeves lost two of its major stars in 2025. Gene Hackman and Terence Stamp played dynamic villains Lex Luthor and Zod, respectively. These two actors, with Reeves, still own the roles they played in this beloved superhero epic. They injected a certain charm to the movie that’s direly missing in the several Superman remakes or reboots.
So many encomiums have been written about Hackman’s award-winning performances. His comedic side was often overlooked. Mel Brooks hired him to play the lonely blind man in Young Frankenstein. The role was small but he made it memorable and hilarious. Young Frankenstein lost another cast member this year, Teri Garr, who played Dr. Frankenstein’s amorous assistant.
Hackman was also benevolently funny in Superman. His Lex Luthor didn’t look evil on the surface. He was a relentless opportunist with lofty ambitions. Terence Stamp’s Zod is more menacing and ruthless, but his take on the villain happily remains in tune with the movie’s comic book origins.
Stamp played out the rest of his career playing grumpy old men, but he elevated this persona to new levels when he played an aging drag queen entertainer lip-synching ABBA songs in Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Back in the 1960s, Stamp was a dashing mod movie star who dated supermodels like Jean Shrimpton. He earned international stardom in 1965 when he was cast in The Collector. I dislike the premise of this film. Stamp played the title role, a psychopath who abducts a girl (Samantha Eggar) he’d been stalking.
The Collector was directed by the great William Wyler. Famous for bringing out the best in his actors, he directed Samantha Eggar, which led to an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. She lost to fellow Brit Julie Christie, who won it for Darling (a roman à clef on Princess Grace). Samantha Eggar also passed away just over a month ago. She starred in several similarly-themed thrillers. She was also prolific on TV, and often added a prestigious cachet to the shows she guest-starred in, from The Love Boat and Starsky and Hutch to L.A. Law.
Also intriguing was the up-and-coming American actor who played Cocoy Laurel’s rival for Nora’s affections. It was Don Johnson!
Another film that lost its two leads this year is Lollipops and Roses, a romantic comedy filmed in San Francisco, California, way back in 1971. Lead stars Nora Aunor and Cocoy Laurel passed away within months of each other. The movie may seem dated, but Nora Aunor makes it entertaining, as she does have a great knack for comedy. Also intriguing was the up-and-coming American actor who played Cocoy Laurel’s rival for Nora’s affections. It was Don Johnson!
Nora Aunor has been the subject of countless paeans, I risk repeating what others have already written about her. Just watch any of her films and you’re sure to witness her magnetic acting talent. She didn’t always need to deliver an iconic line to give us goose pumps. In Naglalayag, she was convincing as a widowed judge. What we loved about her were the little things she gave to a scene and the subtitle nuances she used. Driving in traffic, she turned the car into an important prop—a tool she could use to add depth to her characterization.
Cocoy Laurel was a triple-threat who found success on film and stage. Back in the late 1960s, he and Lotis Key won a contest that crowned them the Philippine Romeo and Juliet. The contest was held in connection with Franco Zefferelli’s flower child-like film version of the Shakespeare play.
I guess I grew up watching Cocoy Laurel perform. He played Che in the country’s very first production of Evita and the title role in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Aside from being a superb singer, Cocoy Laurel could dance the Broadway showstoppers and boogie to the disco music of VST and Company. He also played leading man to two ladies who could also effortlessly rule the dance floor— Vilma Santos (Rock Baby, Rock) and Margie Moran (Oh, Margie, Oh).
We also lost two of Hollywood’s most beloved stars, Robert Redford and Diane Keaton. They were the quintessential movie stars of the 1970s. In a way, they seemed like a throwback to the stars of the Hollywood golden age. Like most of the stars of yesteryear, their acting rarely strayed from their movie personas. Diane Keaton was always Annie Hall; Redford was always suave Robert Redford. They did have a more natural approach to acting. There were no pretentious mid-Atlantic accents, and they could deliver the expletives when the script called for it.
Diane Keaton could be brilliant when she occasionally set aside the Annie Hall shtick for certain films. Her talent for comedy was put to great use by Woody Allen in Love and Death. She held her own against Meryl Streep in Marvin’s Room, and was robbed of the Oscar when she played activist Louise Bryant in Reds.
Redford starred in one classic blockbuster after another; Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Way We Were, All the President’s Men, and Out of Africa. Yet he never dared to expose himself emotionally. He was always the brooding, enigmatic soul whom women desired. As grudgingly described in The Way We Were, he was America the Beautiful.
He was an effective actor who had strong screen presence. But we audiences seldom ever got to know what the character he played was really like. The man he played in Out of Africa was supposed to be balding and British. Unlike his leading lady Meryl Streep, doing accents and Robert de Niro-style transformations weren’t in Redford’s equation. It was all about Streisand or Streep falling hopelessly in love with Robert Redford. It was a winning formula that made him the most sought-after leading man.
Pilita Corrales was the first celebrity I ever saw in person
Another big loss was Pilita Corrales. She was the first celebrity I ever saw in person. Again, it was in school. I was in first grade when she did a show at the school fair. She wore a white mini dress and she sang with Amado del Paraguay. She did use her signature method of bending back while singing. I guess it was her way of expressing the emotion of the lyrics. This probably also further strengthened her lungs to help her reach out to the last row, and perhaps to the next zip code too. She had long hair and looked so vivacious and sang so beautifully. We were all spellbound.
My second encounter with her was when she opened a restaurant at the Greenhills Mall in 2007. She wasn’t one to hide in the restaurant’s office. She played hostess, chatting with diners and singing on the small stage. It was a welcoming place. Pilita looked youthful and trim. I asked if daughter Jackielou Blanco, a fitness guru, had influenced her to work out with her. With mock exasperation, she said, “She’s such an exercise freak. Mag-e-exercise na lang ako sa kama (I’d rather do my exercise in bed)!”
The great old MGM studios once used a slogan boasting it had more stars than there are in heaven. That isn’t so true anymore. The death toll of 2025 was high. There are more great stars in heaven now. May they rest well.
