Cherie Gil, a Beautiful Soul
/Evangeline Rose Gil Eigenmann (June 21, 1963-August 5, 2022)
Cherie Gil (Photo by Sarah Black)
The actress Cherie Gil died in her sleep on Friday, August 5 at 4:48 in the afternoon in New York.
The announcement added that the award-winning actress was diagnosed with a rare form of endometrial cancer in October of last year after deciding to relocate to New York City to be closer to her children, Bianca and Raphael Rogoff.
Everything was kept under wraps as per her instruction to her family.
As a result of that diagnosis, she underwent treatment at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center of New York,
In August last year, she emailed me: “Hello Pablo. How are you? I am now in NYC reunited with my family. I intend to stay on longer to try and see where this next chapter will lead me. I am reaching out to fervently ask if you would be willing to help me out in your field of expertise in writing as I develop and build my website as well as future social media presence. As I navigate these new waters, having a strong virtual and digital presence has become necessary. I know you have great knowledge of my work in as much as I have high regard and admiration for yours. I have begun writing a brief on my background as an actress but I feel it may need some tweaking to form a more poetic and professional structure from an objective point of view.”
Now I am in tears, reading this last email of Cherie Gil to me.
That was the last favor she would ask from me, and I didn’t do anything about it.
At the time, I was coping with hypertension made worse by the death of my second daughter.
I said I couldn't do it. I am not well, I added.
“Why? What happened to you?”
I did not answer.
When my daughter died, I stopped answering emails and I cut off my links even with longtime acquaintances.
Now that Cherie is gone, I reflect on how I became part of her 59-year old life.
I know her husband, the violinist Rony Rogoff.
In 1979, I interviewed his first wife, Ping Valencia, at the Manila Hotel for a woman’s magazine.
In the ‘90s. I interviewed Rogoff’s second wife -- Cherie Gil -- again at the Manila Hotel penthouse for the Manila Chronicle.
She liked what I wrote. She was amazed that I knew what was playing in the background during the interview.
When she appeared in the play Master Class by Terrence McNally, where she played Maria Callas in two memorable Manila revivals in 2008 and 2010, her marriage was about to end. She figured that she was now living the life of Maria Callas whose relationship with Aristotle Onassis ended as it did with high drama.
Cherie with Master Class author Terrence McNally
Cherie as Maria Callas in Master Class
I became close to Cherie Gil by just watching all her plays. It was providential that the character she played in Master Class was the great soprano Maria Callas whom I adored.
Gil as Callas in the Juilliard masterclass scene: “How is everyone? Can you hear me? I don't believe in microphones. Singing is first of all about projection. So is speech. People are forgetting how to listen. They want everything blasted at them. Listening takes concentration. If you can't hear me, it's your fault. You're not concentrating.”
In one performance of Master Class, my seatmates at the Carlos P. Romulo Hall were surprised that Gil as Callas addressed me in the last row of the theater, “And you there. What are you snickering about? You are not concentrating.”
It was her way of acknowledging my presence in the audience.
To be sure, I’ve seen several Filipino Maria Callases before Gil. The first one I watched was the Maria Callas of Baby Barredo. Another one followed before Gil.
I last saw Gil live on stage in the play Full Gallop, which is about the life of the fashion icon Diana Vreeland.
I was in touch with Gil on the first few months of the pandemic in 2020.
She said she spent a quiet New Year alone in Manila, but when Kobe Bryant died in a helicopter crash, she decided to head back to New York to see her family.
She planned to stay for a week but extended it to a couple of weeks. “I haven’t seen them for almost seven months and I realized that life is so fleeting. It was time well spent with them and much needed.”
Before the prolonged pandemic quarantine, she was supposed to start taping for a soap with GMA and a role in a new Mike de Leon project.
Then she flew back to Manila just in time when the threat of the coronavirus became too real to be ignored. Her maid had to go back to her family.
She found herself alone. She had to keep the house, do the cooking herself, and found more time to reflect.
Going through the past chapters of her life, she thought it was like rewinding a movie in her mind. “I think I went as far as my childhood! The memories just flashed through differently on a daily basis.”
Then it dawned on her that this pandemic was one good way of going back to ourselves. “This is what this is all about and what it's meant to be – to reassess ourselves, our values, our actions, our connections, and our behaviors in life, and to others. A time to reflect on all that matter and what doesn’t. Sometimes I wonder if the past is more important than the future and then realizing, that now is the only thing that we can control.”
Before the enhanced quarantine, she headed to a Batangas town by the sea and renewed her ties with Mother Earth by doing some gardening with her friend. “I was at the beach and I can’t tell you how fortunate I was to be there with two of my good lady friends. We decided to be proactive. We built a veggie garden at the back of the house. We were starting a new project that kept me hopeful each morning, something that mattered and we watched grow. A symbol of hope. I believe strongly that this may very well be the ‘new normal’ -- going back to basics and being food secure and self-sufficient.”
Cherie at the farm
Then the bad news filtered back to her about friends and colleagues hit by the virus.
The death of playwright Terrence McNally due to the coronavirus hit her hard. Some years back she personally saw the playwright in a commemoration ceremony in a New York university where her daughter, Bianca, (also into theater) graduated. “He was almost 90 by then and in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank attached. The man, the artist, the creator of amazing stories, and complex characters has lived a fulfilled, amazing life. I would imagine that he probably didn’t mind moving on this way, as dramatic as his plays. It made his passing away even more poignant and connected to one of the most terrifying and uncertain periods in our history. He has given us so much in his long full life. And now, with all due respect, he deserves to rest in peace.”
The exquisite bliss of solitude also dawned on her. “I am cherishing it all. I finally hear the birds chirping on my eight-floor balcony in this concrete jungle called Metro Manila. I never even took the time to listen till now. The lessons? It’s clearly knowing that life is just so fleeting. That we can be sucked out from this earth any time and for whatever reason. To seize every moment is what I have learned. Not to think things too much. To be in the moment of what our true human natures are called for.”
But alone in a house and doing the daily chores by herself was also another source of self-awakening. “I have been tending to myself. I do daily chores my helper used to do. I do it now for myself. That is a part of self-care too. I do it to honor the hard work she has given me for ten years, but now she had to be with her family. Now I appreciate her more than ever. I lived away for twelve years and I had to do it for my family and children. Why not for myself too? I've began to learn to cook different recipes. One of these days when things go back to normal, I can expertly cook for my children and a few very good friends. I am actually enjoying it. More than ever, I have become more connected to my truth than to my ego, which used to take center stage in my daily grind as an actress and being a public persona. Finally, I don’t care what clothes I wear! I look at my closet and tell myself, ‘What the hell am I gonna do with all these shoes and clothes now?’ They don’t matter at all anymore. I can only cherish moments, memories, pictures, and writings and books that are closest to my heart. And the fact that I and my family are well, healthy, and breathing.”
True, she had started to cherish and value the peace and solitude in not being watched, judged, and trying to be more than herself.
Many times, in her solitude, she listened to a video of “Beethoven’s 9th Symphony” as played by the Rotterdam Philharmonic.
Getting the music’s message of hope, she could hardly wait to take the first plane to New York to be with her children.
I followed her life on FB when she decided to stay in New York for good.
In one post, she said she met actor Adrien Brody (the actor who won the Oscar best actor trophy for Roman Polanski’s The Pianist) at the Gugu room.
Cherie with Adrien Brody
Now I am thinking of the roles she played.
I loved her in Peque Gallaga’s Oro, Plata, Mata.
She was peerless as the retired opera singer in Sonata where she bagged the best actress trophy at the ASEAN International Film Festival.
My take on her Sonata: “The healing power of the countryside is depicted in this film and with grand and very apt, musical scoring by Emerzon Texon. For music lovers and musicians, Sonata is both a visual and an aural treat as you hear a re-scored version of Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata,’ and with Cherie Gil (as the retired diva Regina Cadena) trying her hand on Mozart’s ‘Minuet,’ and of course ending in her grand version of Dvorak’s ‘Song to the Moon,’ voiced midway until the end by true-to-life soprano, Camille Lopez Molina. While viewers get to immerse in the opera roles Regina Cadena (Gil) has sung during her vocal peak, the film manages to portray a highly spontaneous portrait of art imitating life and vice-versa. The tormented love life of ‘Tosca’ by Puccini finds real-life equivalence in Gil’s [character’s] relationship with her lover, portrayed by Richard Gomez. The tragic demise of innocent children in the opera ‘Medea’ finds resonance when one of the kids who brings back the diva to normal life meets an untimely death. The scriptwriter, Wango Gallaga, crafted an absorbing story of artists who need a life outside their art. The presence of two kids played by Chino Jalandoni and Joshua Pineda somehow succeeds in filling the gap between the diva’s art and the ordinary listeners who get to know opera characters from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Madama Butterfly (Pinkerton), among others. In this film, Gil transports her role as Maria Callas in Master Class to the emotionally wrecked Regina Cadena in Sonata with such unflinching vulnerability she has the audience rooting for her when she gets back to life, thanks to the kids who taught her that there is life beyond opera’s opening nights. Sonata is a small film with such wide, encompassing, and powerful layers allowing the viewers to see the fine, thin line between art and life.”
Cherie Gil’s winning streak in the international film fest circuit continued when she won Best Actress in the film, Mana, directed by Gabby Fernandez in one edition of the Madrid International Film Festival in Spain.
Gil won over seven other actresses from other countries namely Susie Porter (Is This the Real World), Rachelo Hurd-Wood (Highway to Dhampus), Tilda Cobham-Hervey (One-Eyed Girl), Lily Rabe (Redemption Trail), Mary Krohnert (Nocturne), Ira Dubey (M Cream), Carlotta Elektra Bosch (The Amateur).
The Cherie Gil-starrer Mana was also declared Best Feature Film, winning over 14 other entries from all over the world.
Asked what was special working with Gil even as she eluded Manila’s award-giving bodies, Fernandez said: “Cherie brings such a level of sophistication and subtlety to her character and to her preparation that is unmatched. I think the reason why she is not as appreciated and honored by industry as much as she deserves is because she doesn’t ‘go for the result’ — no stereotypical, over-the-top acting. Even when she is required to portray such roles, she does it with certain truthfulness. She never delivers caricatures or cardboard characters. And let’s face it — Pinoy audiences love caricatures and stereotypes.”
In this sense, every seasoned moviegoer knows by heart her most iconic line from the 1985 blockbuster film Bituing Walang Ningning opposite megastar Sharon Cuneta: "You're nothing but a second rate, trying hard copycat!"
As expected, the movie industry was shocked by her sudden death.
Sharon Cuneta’s Instagram post: “What will I do without you now, Love? My true screen partner, a true friend, ninang of Simone… I will miss you so terribly and know it will only get worse. Be at peace in God’s loving arms, my Cheech. I will love you with all my heart forever. Thank you for everything.”
Pablo A. Tariman contributes to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, Vera Files and The Diarist.Ph. He is author of a first book of poetry, Love, Life and Loss – Poems During the Pandemic. He was one of 160 Asian poets who made it in the anthology, The Best Asian Poetry 2021-22 published in Singapore. Born in Baras, Catanduanes, he has three daughters and six grandchildren.
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