t has been a long and rough road to love and happiness for Melanie, but four husbands and six kids later, she has arrived. Here is her journey retold.

Wearing the orange chiffon pantsuit by Nono Palmos she wants to be shot in, Melanie describes her outfit as casual and comfortable, they way she likes it. Glancing at the rack of clothes, she expresses some concern. It is understandable. She has been a beauty queen since age 15, probably has been wearing couture ever since, even if later on she would reveal that it is normal for her to wear five-dollar Anne Klein knock-offs from Payless, a US shoe store chain specializing in low-end shoes, and clothes from Divisoria that celebrity friends would mistake for Gaultier. She is unsure about wearing clother other than the Nono Palmoses and Larry Espinosa she has been commissioned to wear. But she gives in, and so begins our Melanie experience…

“I am contented with my long-legged…”

This was Melanie's answer during the question and answer portion of the Bb. Pilipinas pageant in 1979. The question: Would you insure your legs, like actress Angie Dickinson, who insured her legs for a million dollars? It is the first of countless malapropisms to be heard from the then 15-year-old girl from Pampanga, who, from then on, would be known as one of the country's great beauties. The answer, years would prove, is classic Melanie—hitting the mark in the unresponsive, earnest English she has turned into a unique, comedic persona. Only she was serious. Still is.

“If fashion is your problem, it's not your problem anymore. It's my problem anymore.”

Now in her 40s, the dusky 5'11” actress is casual and comfortable. She is conscious of the laugh lines that are beginning to show in the pictures. Looking at her thing frame, no one would've known she has had six, yes six, children (Manuelito, 23, Mazenne, 16, Maxine, 13, Michelle, 10, Adam, 4, and Abraham, 2) from her four husbands. Yet, she is as beautiful as ever.

Her new show on QTV 11, Ginang Fashionista, capitalizes on the two qualities for which she has gained both fame and infamy—her beauty and her English. The show's tag line is typically Marquesian: If fashion is your problem, it's not your problem anymore; it's my problem anymore. As with the current reality TV trend, Ginang Fashionista is a makeover show that will turn “commoners” into swans—within a reasonable budget of course. The show aims to inspire people, improve their self-esteem, she says. It probably will.

She will make it click, she vows. The show is sandwiched between the time slots of top rating shows, The Buzz of ABS-CBN 2 and S-Files of GMA 7. “I know it's a challenge,” she declares. “But what if it becomes number one?” Her eyes sparkle with admirable competitiveness. She wants to win. It is a hint of the same unyielding determination that has helped her in her struggle for recognition and respect.

“Why should I have a calling card? I'm not a call girl.”

Born Mimilanie Marquez, Melanie is one of the many children of the late director Artemio Marquez outside of his marriage to Joey Marquez's mother. Her life was anything but charmed. All her life she had to work for everything she has. Her mom was poor, and eventually Melanie had to live with her director dad. But that didn't work.

“I was staying with my Dad and was driven out of the house,” she says her stepmother brainwashed her dad to send her away. True to evil stepmother form, the stepmother went to Melanie's school and had her dropped from the rolls. Melanie had nowhere to go and money was scarce. So she came to Manila to become a model upon the invitation of a friend of designer Rene Salud. “I needed the job to support myself,” she says. “I found out that everyday lunch was free. Struggling model ako nun.” She was paid thirty pesos a day for modeling and free lunch. The free lunch was the clincher. Alone and far from home, she started living with friends. Melanie was 13.

She was still 13 when she said the calling card remark to a duke of England . The late Conching Sunico, head of Karilagan, then the top modeling agency, wanted Melanie to act more ladylike and brought her to social gatherings. It was on one such occasion that the duke gave Melanie his calling card and asked her to call him. In turn, he had asked for her card, and had gotten the shocking reply, “Why should I have a calling card? I am not a call girl.”

“That's why I'm a success, it's because I don't middle in other people's lives.”

When she turned 14, Melanie decided she needed a car. “Yung time nay un pala, models needed to look like models,” Melanie concluded. “Tita Conching was so disappointed in me because she saw me one time sa Luenta, playing basketball with the tambays.” Thus, Melanie decided that part of looking like a model is having a car. So she joined the contest, Miss Young International, a beauty pageant for teenagers where the prize for the two major titles was a car. Although, true to form, she thought she could get the car just by signing up. She won.

Rene Salud then convinced her to join Bb. Pilipinas. From there, we all know that she won and won and won: Bb. Pilipinas International when she was about 14, Miss International at 15, second in the Face of the Eighties in New York at 21, Supermodel first runner up at 22, and Most Glamorous Woman in Italy also at 22. Finally, she won a Best Actress award at 23 for her self-produced, self-starred movie, The Untold Story of Melanie Marquez, directed by her father, of course.

“We are lovers, not fighters.”

“Everyone knows naman that I'm like E liza beth Taylor, no,” Melanie is saying as she is made up. The subject has shifted to her husbands. Her first—and most traumatic—is her relationship to then action star, now senator Lito Lapid. He was 24; she was 16, was pregnant at 17. It was only after giving birth that she found out that the man she loved was married.

“I was fooled,” she says emphatically, describing how she had a mild heart attack at 18 when she found out Lapid was married. She narrates how she lapsed into a coma that lasted for three days before delivering a Melanie line: “I am the type who'll never get involved with a married man. Never! It's beyond my principle!”

Her involvement with the Senator, she says, was a nightmare, the lowest point in her life. She felt condemned by the conservative Philippine Catholic public, so she left for the US , vowing to return triumphant. “I told my Dad that I am coming back with a cake on my hand again and this time, I swear, I will never come back and step in my own soul without a cake on my hand,” she says with Melanian fervor, alluding, of course, to having her cake and eating it, too. “That's why when I came back after five years, I was the New York Face of the Eighties.” Thus, was Melanie's turn to eat cake, while her detractors got egg on their faces.

Then came husband number two, a Muslim Arab sheik, and a shipping magnate. “He was a spoiled brat,” Melanie says, laughing, “and couldn't take the fact that an Oriental like me would dump him. So he invited me over, saying he was sick, pero nagkasakit nga yata mentally, and there was a ceremony. I didn't know that if you are asked, ‘Do you accept him?' three times, you would be married.” She was married to him for 57 days. Though she admits falling for husband number two, it was unfortunate that the sheik refused to accept her son, Manuelito. A man, who refuses to accept your son, was, naturally, unacceptable.

“I have been very proud of my children,” she says, considering herself one of the first celebrities to go public about being an unwed mother. “So, sabi ko, it's [referring to her life] an open book and if you want me to choose you over my son, I choose my son. Get out of my life. Yun lang!” So even if he offered her an island in Europe , she had to divorce him, divorce him, divorce him—even if this marriage produced child number two, Mazenne.

Best friend of 17 years, Derek Dee, became husband number three. Unknown to Melanie, Derek was in love with her. Waiting in the sidelines until she was free to commit herself, Derek proposed. “You know, we were married eight years, but were together only for one and a half,” Melanie says wistfully. Apparently, Derek didn't want to sign documents pertaining to their annulment, dragging the case.

“Period na, wala ng exclamation point.”

When asked on S-Files if her current husband, Atty. Adam Lawyer, is her Mr. Right, Melanie answered, “Period na talaga, wala ng exclamation point.” Eleven years her senior, they met at a fundraising event. She was wearing a Harley Davidson-inspired getup: leather jeans, metal studs, all black. He would later tell Melanie he thought she was beautiful but he felt intimidated by her. So, three more years would pass before they married at the Church of Latter Day Saints in White Plains in 1999. In Adam, she says, she's met the man she'll be with forever. Period.

She has two children with Adam—Adam and Abraham—and is deliriously in love with him. She is hoping for a third child with him next year—her seventh! Unknowingly, Adam fulfilled one of Melanie's dreams: to be a lawyer, as she is now a Lawyer by marriage. Her marriage is not perfect, and she has learned to be “submissive,” as there cannot be two leaders in the house, Melanie says. “I've proven myself. I told my mom I can be successful without a man in my life,” Melanie narrates. “My mom (used to) always tell me that women cannot be successful without a man in their lives. Talagang old-fashioned. Pero, actually lahat ng success ko wala akong lalake sa buhay ko.”

“Don't judge me; I am not a book.”

And it's true, from the time she pulled gray hairs at the rate of one centavo per strand at age seven, Melanie has been working hard to earn her keep. It doesn't bother her that people laugh at her English, “It's Filipino,” she says, resigned to it. She speaks some Italian, some Spanish and some French, too, but is not laughed at when she speaks to foreigners—whether in their language or in English. “In fact, when I speak, they think my English is good.”

It is Adam who is bothered by the ridicule thrown her way and has become protective of her. That's why he had asked her not to publish her book, a collection of Melanie malapropisms aptly entitled, Don't Judge Me, I Am Not A Book, a pun on her less than witty remark on TV when she witty remark on TV when she defended her brother, Joey Marquez, and blurted out the now famous line, “Don't judge my brother; he is not a book.”

In exchange for the book's non-publication, Adam offered Melanie a house in Forbes Park . Given the circumstances, it would be stupid to insist on the publication of the book—and, straight talking, language lapsing, unafraid Melanie may be clueless when it comes to some things, but she is not stupid; she took the house.

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