eenage stardom. Box office attraction. Magnet for controversy. Gretchen Barretto remains a combustible presence even though these days, she's basically been a home-happy mom who gets to bed by 9PM. Rome Jorge discovers the fighter that still lurks within her.

She likes to have things her way. It's early morning, and Gretchen Barretto immediately stipulates guidelines for the interview: No questions about the Barretto family. She bristles when the conversation brushes too close to the topic. She swats open-ended questions—the kind preferred by journalists to let their subjects freely expound a personal interpretation—demanding instead concise parameters for each inquiry. She does not like her responses to wander beyond her grasp. Decades of stardom and intrigue hone her words.

She faces the latest in professional makeup mobile gadgetry—a metal-lined suitcase that opens to reveal an arsenal of paints, powders and brushes as well as mirror crowned by a dozen light bulbs, while Patrick Rosas affixes artificial lashes to her own one at a time. With a handful of people attending to her needs and with instruments pointed at her eyes, she answers questions without batting the carefully applied lashes. She reveals that her latest television commercial, an endorsement for San Miguel Light Beer, is out. On the shoot, the manic attention is on her, but this is just another day to the 34-year-old actress.

Fair and flawless, her face is symmetry in alabaster. Twenty years of fame and countless controversies both great and small do not disturb her simple countenance.

Starting A Star

“At 10 years old, I knew I wanted to be an actress watching Flor de Luna and Anna Liza. I would switch channels during commercials,” confesses Gretchen. She recalls that it was no struggle to gain her family's consent. Her fondest memory from her first broadcast appearance at age 12 in a television advertisement for the Cinderella fashion store's Made in Heaven label.

Soon after, Regal Films' matriarch Lily Monteverde, began searching for another batch of child stars to follow the footsteps of her “Regal Babies” such as Maricel Soriano and Snooky Serna. Monteverde found the young Barretto through the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. “Mother Lily wouldn't stop until she had you,” Gretchen recalls fondly. And she wanted it just as much. A flurry of acting workshops, dancing lessons and pictorials followed.

“I super loved it. Feel na feel ko the first time someone asked me for an autograph,” confides the actress, herself an unabashed fan of Maricel Soriano and Sharon Cuneta.

Now that the local movie industry is in the doldrums, she misses the times when the industry was vibrant and its schedule were hectic. “Sometimes you'd wear the same makeup filming two to three movies at the same time,” Gretchen reveals. She adds that she loved promoting her movies at the talk shows of Vilma Santos, Nora Aunor and Maricel Soriano and bumping into competing contemporaries such as Dawn Zulueta, Christina Gonzalez and Nanette Medved.

Gretchen takes special pride in having starred in the movie Lumayo Ka Man Sa Akin by Laurice Guillen. But she laments, “Today, showbiz is not the same. There's less competition. It's not as busy.”

Early in her career, Monteverde paired Gretchen with fellow child actor Benedict Aquino. But it was Nadia Montenegro , her 11-year-old co-star in her first film Fourteen Going Steady, who is her best friend today. “We call each other up every time they'd show it on TV. Kilig,” confesses Gretchen. Dominique, her 10-year-old daughter, then asks, “Is that Tita Nadia?” Gretchen admits to cringing at the sight of herself in such outdated fashion. She recalls that she and Nadia would always fight during the filming of Steady to the consternation of its director Joey Gosengfiao.

“He gave us money to buy whatever we wanted at the local corner store. Chocolate mallows were our favorite. They had six boxes. But Nadia, being the bigger one, took four. I insisted we both have three each. We both ended up crying, giving the director a headache,” recounts Gretchen. Then she adds, “It feels so good that now I can buy all the mallows I want.”

Today the two constantly keep in touch over the telephone. But with Nadia, a mayor's wife and a mother of six who loves the nightlife, and Gretchen, a kickboxing health buff who sleeps and wakes early, she admits that they always make plants to meet up that never happen. The two of them often still quarrel, she admits, “She'll bang the phone. But later, she'll send a text message, ‘I miss you.”

Ironically, it was Montenegro who dragged Gretchen into her first showbiz controversy.

“I'm A Fighter”

Gretchen recalls her best friend spreading rumors that she already had a celebrity boyfriend at the tender age of 14. Gretchen confides, “Aga Muhlach was my type.” At this recollection she laughs loudly, adding some color to her chiseled features.

Then she admits, “I'm glad I went through the intrigue. It is part of the [movie] culture. It's fun learning in the process. Each time you get over it, it makes you stronger.” She thinks that one of the benefits of her busy movie career then was that it kept her busy. She couldn't bother with rumors or backtalk.

“I'm from showbiz. I'm a fighter. I'm used to intrigue,” she declares.

Over the years, she's learned to say, “So what?” Gretchen explains. “The Filipino easily forgets. Today it's you, tomorrow they're talking about someone else.” As for how intrigue may have affected her relationships, she empathically declares, “I am not going to allow anyone to make an issue of the past. I will not deny any of my relationships. I am not ashamed because I truly loved them.” For a time, Gretchen had a relationship with basketball player Joey Loyzaga. Today, she has made a family with daughter Dominique and Tonyboy Cojuangco, proprietor of the ABC 5 television network.

“I'm a public figure,” she accepts. “And a writer is a writer. There will be good write-ups and bad write-ups. You'll have to take the good with the bad.”

- -