After last year’s feature on famous Filipinos in Hollywood, here is another list of Filipino artists and celebrities who conquered the United Kingdom. Get to know them. (Source: Wikipedia)
Mutya Buena
Rosa Isabel Buena was born 21 May 1985 in Kingsbury, London. She is popularly known as Mutya Buena – an English singer and songwriter who rose to fame as a member of the pop group Sugababes.
Her family currently lives in Kingsbury, London. Her father is of Filipino descent from Tagbilaran City, Bohol while her mother is half Irish, quarter Chinese and quarter Spanish. She attended Kingsbury High School. Her name “Mutya” means “muse” or “pearl” in Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines. She has five brothers (Bayani, Charlie, Chris, Danny and Roberto) and two younger sisters, Ligaya and Dalisay; another sister, Maya, died in 2002, and the song “Maya” on the album Three is dedicated to her. On March 23, 2005, Mutya gave birth to 5lb 10oz Tahlia-Maya Buena, her first child with boyfriend Jay, which was rumoured to be one of the reasons she left the Sugababes. She named her child Tahlia-Maya in memory of her sister, Maya.
Leilani Dowding
Leilani Dowding (born 30 January 1980 in Bournemouth, Dorset, England) is a Page Three girl, glamour model, television celebrity, and former beauty queen. She is biracial, with an English father and a Filipina mother.
Dowding did well in school, earning eleven GCSEs and three A-levels. While studying for an economics degree at Royal Holloway, University of London, in Surrey, the nineteen-year-old entered and won the 1998 Miss Great Britain competition. In Hawaii later that year she became the first woman of Asian descent to represent Britain in the Miss Universe pageant. She is also related to Chief Air Marshal Lord Dowding.
Rachel Grant
Rachel Louise Grant De Longueuil, more commonly known as Rachel Grant, (born 1977 on the island of Luzon, in the Philippines) is an actress and model of British/French and Filipino ancestry. She moved to the United Kingdom when she was a baby. Her British father, a retired doctor and hypnotist, is Michael Grant, 12th Baron de Longueuil.
She is most famous for her role as Nina, the hostess of horror show Sci-fright and as a minor Bond girl in the film Die Another Day.
In addition to her acting roles she was also the body double of Angelina Jolie in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. She has also appeared in a number of UK Television commercials, including adverts for Lynx and Carlsberg. She is also a former competitor in Miss Great Britain.
Myleene Klass
Myleene Angela Klass (born 6 April 1978) is an English classical pianist, commercial model, television and radio presenter, and former member of the UK pop group Hear’Say. Her pop success achieved 4 Top 10 singles, 2 of which were UK Number Ones. Hear’Say also released 2 albums, Popstars and Everybody.
Klass was born in Gorleston, Norfolk, England to an Austrian father and a Filipino mother. She comes from six generations of classical musicians on her father’s side: Myleene’s grandmother was an opera singer and her grandfather left his violin to her, which she later went on to play.
Klass began to learn the piano and violin from the age of four and then the harp at 12. She then took Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music (ABRSM) exams in violin, piano and voice whilst still at school. She received an A grade in A-level music, and became a Norfolk County scholar.
Klass was educated at firstly at St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Primary School then she went to Cliff Park High School in Gorleston, before going to Notre Dame High School, Norwich for a short time. She then went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and followed this with a postgraduate degree at the Royal Academy of Music.
She was also one of the casts of Miss Saigon in the West End.
Chad Gould
Chad Edward Alesna Gould (born September 30, 1982) is an English-Filipino football player who plays for the Philippine national team.
He was born in Cebu City, Philippines, but moved to Dorset, UK as a child. As a child he was taught to play football by his father. During his childhood he played for numerous teams, Dorset County, Bournemouth representative, Bournemouth AFC and most notably Southampton FC.
He also part of the British up and coming band Redgrave alongside his cousin British actor Royce Cronin.
Trey Farley
Trey Farley (born Jason Farley on 1 July 1975 in Manila, Philippines) is a British actor and television presenter. He studied Environmental Geoscience at University College London.
He has presented for MTV Europe as well as the British programmes Masters of Combat, Loves Like a Dog, Grandstand and Live & Kicking. He began his character working for Channel V in Asia as producer, director and presenter. He also won an award for ‘Most Innovative Presenter at the Asian Television Awards’.
He has also acted in various films including Bend it like Beckham where he played Taz, Containment where he played Jacob, The Run, Martyr and Slow Fade. As well as appeared on stage in London.
He was born to an English father and Filipino mother. He is married to fellow television presenter Katy Hill, whom he met whilst presenting Live & Kicking. They have a daughter together called Kaya Skye.
Trey also recently appeared in British TV medical drama Casualty. Playing a police officer friend of Selina’s old friends from the police station. Trey’s character got quite flirty with nurse Tess Bateman, whilst she was on a girls’ night out with her work colleagues.
David Medalla
David Medalla is a Filipino international artist, who was born in Manila, the Philippines in 1942. His work ranges from sculpture and kinetic art to painting, installation and performance art. He lives and works in London, New York and Paris.
At the age of 12 he was admitted at Colombia University in New York upon the recommendation of American poet Mark van Doren and studied ancient Greek drama with Moses Hadas, modern drama with Eric Bentley, modern literature with Lionel Trilling, modern philosophy with John Randall and attended the poetry workshops of Leonie Adams.
In the late 1950s he returned to Manila and met Jaime Gil de Biedma (the Catalan poet) and the painter Fernando Zobel de Ayala, who became the earliest patrons of his art. In 1960s Paris, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard introduced his performance ‘Brother of Isidora’ at the Academy of Raymond Duncan, later, Louis Aragon would introduce another performance and finally, Marcel Duchamp honoured him with a ‘medallic’ object.
His work was included in Harald Szeemann’s exhibition ‘Weiss auf Weiss’ (1966) and ‘Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form’ (1969) and in the DOCUMENTA 5 exhibition in 1972 in Kassel.
In the early 1960s he moved to the UK and co-founded the Signals Gallery in London in 1964, which presented international kinetic art. He was editor of the Signals news bulletin from 1964 to 1966. In 1967 he initiated the Exploding Galaxy, an international confluence of multi-media artists. From 1974 – 1977 he was chairman of Artists for Democracy, an organisation dedicated to ‘giving material and cultural support to liberation movements worldwide’ and director of the Fitzrovia Cultural Centre in London.
