he girl's got the classic good looks and now, 10 years into the business, her acting range has been proven, from doing bad girl roles to emoting under layers of prosthetic makeup in a popular fantaserye. Anne has had a generous share of intrigues, too, but she's breezed through it all with that signature grin and vibrant sense of humor

Having started as a child actress, Anne Curtis counts a decade of Tinsel Town but she has remained as bubbly and as candid as the day the plane flew her in from “Down Under.” Hard at work on the set of her ABS-CBN gigs, the soap Maging Sino Ka Man and the weekly variety show ASAP, attending functions as the face of Watch Republic, Petit Monde, GSM Blue and SMART, and shooting her latest film, Ang Cute Ng Ina Mo, she's maintained an even keel and remains the approachable “girl next door” who sets everyone at ease with a simple but genuine smile. “I am really super talkative!” she exclaims.

As she poses between singing and humming tunes from John Mayer, she unveils her chameleon-like talents to the camera, shifting between flashes, with each expression worlds away from the one before. Yes, she has learned to sit comfortably in the limelight in more ways than one.

She gets even more comfortable once the lights have gone down. Kicking off her ballet flats, Anne appropriates a cozy spot on a couch in the studio, thanking everyone in the shoot with that famous smile. One then understands how she captivates. Some say she looks like Natalie Portman, others, Audrey Hepburn, whose movies and memorabilia she loves for the classics, this star moves to her own notes, which readily makes her unique and interesting to a good number of “blokes” in and out of the biz. But she doesn't want to talk about that now.

With an apparent string of suitors going public with their intentions, one could have expected an unbearably self-absorbed persona but, as impression would have it, Anne Curtis proves to be otherwise. Spending the first years of her life in what she affectionately calls “The Outback” has kept her grounded.

JUST A SMALL-TOWN KID

Anne Ojales Curtis-Smith was born in Yarrawonga, a relatively sleepy town hours from Melbourne , to an Australian lawyer and Filipina housewife. A simple life, you may call it. “In Australia , I was in bed by 8:30pm. I would ride my bike to school. In fact, I think you can see my whole town in a day. So, when I got here, Megamall was like, WOW!” Nevertheless, she is very much at home in the Philippines , “I'd rather be in Manila than any other country in the world right now,” she confesses.

This 22-year-old “Filipinized” Aussie is almost rid of her accent and has even coined a couple of homegrown expressions of her own. With heart set on a proper acting career, she knew from the get-go that having just the face, but not the voice, for the screen was not going to fly at all. “My first movie was dubbed because I could barely say the words!” Not wanting to limit her range, she immediately focused and learned Filipino in two and a half years, “I worked and studied. It's easy enough when you put your heart into it, but some words I still get buluktot (sic),” she says with an unsure look on her face.

A lot has changed since then. Anne has matured on-and-off-screen. She is no longer typecast as some ditsy or pompous character that she used to get loads of because of her mestiza looks and her then-very foreign accent. “I must confess that in the beginning I didn't take it (acting) seriously. It was more like playing. For one thing, I was really young then. Now, it is a passion.”

CELEBRITY REAPING

With success came, of course, intrigue. Being linked with more than a handful of lookers proved to be daunting. “What hurt me the most was being called a playgirl or party girl. (Shades of Stephanie, her kontrabida role in the soap, Hiram?). It wasn't true.” In fact, her relationships were pretty serious and went on for years, in most cases. “My first love was Oyoboy Sotto. At that time, I was 16 and he was 17. We were together for about three years.” Her next relationships lasted some two years each. Now, in an industry where relationships are measured in dog years, hers have proven to be quite a stretch. Unfortunately, then until now, not many are interested in the truth because broadcast gossip is always much juicier. A fact that she had to learn the hard way and which she has settled into dealing with. This was perhaps why her father, James, hesitated when she first broached the idea of joining the business. “In the beginning, my father was not for it. But my mom (Carmen) always dreamed of having an artista daughter.” And, typically, Anne would rather look at the bright side of the profession even as it is only now that she's come to really enjoy the spoils of her work. The happiest moment in her life, she claims, is when her dad first walked into her new house. “He said that I came a long way and I felt so happy to hear him say he's proud of me.”

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