What does it take to look so much like a homeless man that people online think you're a real beggar? Veteran actor Mon Confiado has an answer.
Confiado opened up about his craft in an episode of Toni Talks on the Toni Gonzaga Studio YouTube channel, titled "Mon Confiado On Being Possessed By The Characters He Plays." The interview takes viewers inside his world of acting and the craft he has become known for: Method acting.
During the conversation, host Toni Gonzaga said Confiado has done 1,000 television episodes and 300 films to date. Confiado said he has been working since 1993, which means those 300 films represent more than 30 years of work.
Gonzaga described him as a character actor who has played many kinds of roles over the past three decades. She also said he seems particularly known for playing villains, and Confiado agreed.
The homeless role
The episode opens with Confiado recalling a role as a homeless man. He said he slept in Binondo and looked like a homeless man. It even went viral, he said, because people thought he was actually a beggar.
He also recounted picking up a cup from the trash at the airport. The cup he got was transparent, but too thin, he said. When he poured hot water into it, it melted.
For the role, Confiado said his veins started to show, he shaved his head, and for a month he walked hunched over. He stayed in that mode even at home.
"I even spoke that way, even when I was with my family," said Mon Confiado, veteran character actor.
Gonzaga called it an incredible level of commitment. Confiado said someone warned him after the shoot to be careful because he might have wounds, and that he got about five injections afterward.
How it started
Confiado said he started from the very bottom, as a talent with lines. His father, Angel Confiado, was also an actor who worked from the LVN era until the late 1990s. But his father's career was not a passport into acting, he said, because his father wanted him to study.
He said he owned a jeepney that a Regal production manager rented for a film by Elwood Perez and Chuck Perez. When he brought the vehicle to the set, Direk Elwood Perez recognized him as Angel Confiado's son.
Confiado said he grew up on film sets because his father always brought him to shoots. His father was also part of a Passion Play (Senakulo) at the Cultural Center of the Philippines for 15 consecutive years, so he got to watch some of the best actors perform. Looking back, he said, it may have all found its way into his subconscious.
He did not dream of acting as a child. He took up civil engineering at Mapúa, but once he got into acting, he said, nothing could stop him anymore.
Theater as his acting school
Confiado said his path was film, then television, then theater, the opposite of most actors. With no formal acting training, theater became his school. He also attended workshops with Direk Peque Gallaga, who directed his first film, Shake, Rattle & Roll Part 4. He played one of Marilyn Reynes's classmates, the best man in her character's daydream of marrying her professor, played by Edu Manzano.
He said many people from Gallaga's group later became directors, and that he appeared in their first films because he was close to them. Each project led to more connections, which he said is how he ended up doing 300 films.
22nd Street
Gonzaga also brought up 22nd Street. Confiado clarified that he and his sister were managing it, and said many comedians trained there, including Chokoleit and Gladys Guevarra.
Source: Toni Gonzaga Studio (YouTube), Toni Talk