Ruby Ruiz may yet become another Dolly de Leon who, from being a character actor in dozens of indie films, now enjoys international stature and has starred in a lead role in a blockbuster mainstream film in the Philippines, A Very Good Girl.
Ruiz is cast in Linlang, ABS-CBN’s series on Prime Video, which is topbilled by Paulo Avelino, Kim Chiu and JM de Guzman. Seemingly for the first time in her 40-year-old acting career, Ruiz was asked to join the media conference and preview for the series, where she portrays surrogate mother to Chiu’s character as the two-timing wife of the boxer-turned seaman portrayed by Avelino.
Ruiz, 62, sat with the main stars along with the Maricel Soriano, young actor Kayla Estrada and the series’ co-director, transwoman Jojo Saguin. The event was held at Cinema 76, a stone’s throw from ABS-CBN studios in Quezon City.
Ruiz is actually basking in international fame these days for her appearance in one of the nine episodes of the Amazon series Expats, produced by and starring Nicole Kidman.
That episode is billed as “Central” and runs for 96 minutes. Ruiz has many scenes with Kidman, who reportedly chose Ruiz from among dozens who auditioned for the nanny role via Zoom. The episode was premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last month.
Ruiz is one of only two Pinoys in the cast that features several Asian actors, since the TV series is set in 2014 Hong Kong. The other Pinoy is the Hong Kong-based singer Amelia Pardenilla, a newcomer in acting.
Ruiz has many scenes with Kidman, whose acting Ruiz said she found to be very natural. “For her, it’s just like breathing. I hope to be able to do the same eventually,” said Ruiz on the sidelines of the Cinemalaya Film Festival last August where she had two entries: Ginhawa and Angat.
De Leon also had two Cinemalaya entries: Bayan ng Magiting and Ti Mapukukaw, which won Best Picture. Ruiz won Best Supporting Actress for Ginhawa, her second trophy in the category following her first in 2013 for her talent coordinator role in Ekstra, topbilled by Vilma Santos.
Very nervous
Ruiz recalled that she was very nervous only in her first scenes with Kidman. “I’ve already sunk into my character in our succeeding scenes!” she said.
On their last taping day, Kidman gave her a hug and told her how good an actress she (Ruiz) is. “I told her that I was just reacting to how great she was in all our scenes together…,” said Ruiz.
Expats is slated to be shown in the Philippines on Prime Video in early 2024. Variety magazine describes Ruiz’s character in the Central episode as “the heart and soul of the story.”
Ruiz trained as an actor with the Philippine Educational Theater Association along with thespians Ellen Ongkingko-Marfil and Emmanuel Palo, who eventually became filmmakers. Palo is the main director of Linlang.
First film
Ruiz was with PETA when the late great Lino Brocka headed the company. Her first film appearance was in Bona (1980), directed by Brocka and starring Nora Aunor and Phillip Salvador, a Brocka protege. Ruiz was only 18 at that time, a Philippine Studies student at the University of the Philippines-Diliman.
Both Ruiz and De Leon, 53, are well-known in the indie film circuit — but have yet to work together. (De Leon has an AB in Theater, also from UP Diliman.)
Both were in the cast of the impressive ABS-CBN series Dirty Linen, playing characters that had early deaths in the series. They technically had a scene together: Ruiz, as housemaid Lydia, was horrified at the sight of the corpse of De Leon stashed in the back compartment of a car. But the corpse that Ruiz gasped at must have been just any rolled-up lump. De Leon’s face wasn’t shown at that point in the narrative.
At the Dirty Linen preview in a Trinoma theater, De Leon wasn’t around as she was abroad promoting her international breakout film, Ruben Ostlund’s Cannes’ winning Triangle of Sadness.
Ruiz was then at the preview audience, looking like a fan in a nondescript dress. The limelight was on the lead cast: Janine Gutierrez, John Arcilla, Tessie Tomas and Zanjoe Marudo.
Ruiz began reaping international acclaim in 2020 by winning Best Actress at the Harlem International Film Festival in New York for her performance in Iska, as the enduring grandmother of a little boy with severe mental illness. Ruiz heard that it was her performance in Iska that Expats director Lulu Wang saw and which she remembered when she had to cast for a nanny who is a professional actor.
Ruiz has admitted that she did work as a nanny in Canada from 2004 to 2007, before returning to the Philippines to resume acting.
For Iska, Ruiz also won Best Actress the previous year at Cinemalaya.
Ruiz has confided to some showbiz scribes that she is a single mother who walked out of her marriage to a wife-beating husband, taking along their son.
She dreams of doing a film with Dolly De Leon and one with Tom Cruise, since she has now worked with his ex-wife.
Ruiz has also done a Vivamax movie, which began streaming on 6 October: Langitngit, a sex-thriller topbilled by a returning young actress known as Manang Medina. Ruiz portrays a spinster with a secret. She’s on a roll.