Is it too soon to think of actor Dolly de Leon as a National Artist for Film and Theater?

No, not necessarily next year when it's time again to bestow the Order of National Artist honors, which are given only every two years and are among the highest official recognitions the Philippine government can bestow.

The National Commission on Culture and the Arts recently held a media conference to call for nominations to the eight National Artist award categories: Architecture & Allied Arts, Broadcast Arts, Dance, Film, Literature, Music, Theater and Visual Arts.

Radio and television are within the domain of Broadcast Arts.

The NCAA's call for nominations was what prompted some people to think of De Leon as a potential National Artist.

To be clear, neither De Leon nor CreaZion Studios, Inc., the multimedia company that now manages De Leon's career in the Philippines, broached the possibility. Creatives RJ Agustin and Real Florido head the company as president and executive vice president, respectively. Florido is the award-winning filmmaker who used to be a director and creative producer at GMA7.

De Leon has separate managers for her foreign films. Fusion Entertainment may have closed the deal for her appearance in Nine Perfect Lives, headlined by Nicole Kidman, who is also its producer for the Hulu streaming platform.

Warm woman

CreaZion, which has financial backing from a Singapore-based company (RTH Holdings), hosted a media huddle exclusive for De Leon about a week before NCCA's media event. The De Leon who faced the journos from a couch at the posh Las Casas Filipinas restaurant-resort at Fernando Poe Jr. Avenue (formerly Roosevelt) is a warm woman who mostly gabbed in Tagalog despite her being tagged "The Global Pinay Actress", able to act in English in the Hollywood and international films she appears in.

De Leon sported short blonde hair, a carry-over from a major role in a film shot in Chicago early this month which she did as soon as the Hollywood screenwriters' strike was declared finished.

De Leon is a single mother to four children: three grown-ups, and the youngest a pre-teen. She once mentioned in an interview that her father is an Ilocano, and it was to honor her father's memory that she voiced the mother's character in the animated film Ti Mapukpukaw, the Ilocano phrase for "those who are lost."

Before she became an international sensation, De Leon recalled going to five video tests for commercials all in one day by taxi cab and lugging all the outfits required for the test shots. "Dagdag na kita rin para sa akin yung commercials na nilabasan ko, makilala man ako o hindi sa ikli ng exposure ko," she said.

The actress is flying to Germany in January next year to shoot the Hulu series with Kidman. She will be in nine episodes, and in some of them, she will be acting with Kidman.

Also anticipated next year are the releases of two movies De Leon shot, Paul Feig's Grand Death Lotto with John Cena, Awkwafina, Simu Liu, Seann William Scott, Sam Asghari and Leslie David Baker; and Nathan Silver's Between the Temples, starring Jason Schwartzman.

De Leon also shot Alex Thompson's Ghost Light early this month in Chicago. The story, by writer Kelly O' Sullivan, is about a family's way of healing through theater after experiencing death among its members.

Difficult campaign

She has become a voting member of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the body that hands out the Oscars — the first and only Filipino actor so far included in the Actors' Branch.

"While I'm already under the Actors' Branch — meaning I can vote under the best actor/actress and best supporting actor/actress categories — I was also asked to vote under the best international feature film category. I declined because I have a film that's under consideration for a nomination, Iti Mapukpukaw, and I feel that it's a conflict of interest because I will definitely vote for that. At least, I get to vote in those four categories and, to me, that's very important because we now have a voice and finally it can be heard."

About a possible Oscar campaign for a nomination for Carl Joseph Papa's animated drama Iti Mapukpukaw, De Leon said it makes her sad that the campaign is having a hard time taking off. The film needs at least P6 million for promotions and, so far, they have only raised half of it, she revealed.

"The challenge is the funding. You need a lot of money for people to watch [the film]," she said.

"I'm not sure if you're aware, but when you say 'Oscar campaign,' you don't just go around and say, 'Vote for us!' You say, 'Please watch our film,' so you reserve theaters, you give people tickets so they can watch the film for free. You send out screeners. You host dinners, soirees. You host a lot of events and that costs a lot of money."

For her AB in Theater Arts, De Leon went to the University of the Philippines.She started appearing in Dulaang UP plays in the early '90s and was among the favorite students of the late professor Tony Mabesa, who was posthumously honored as a National Artist for Theater last year.