She calls me “tocayo” and I call her “tocaya.” Butch and Boots. The spelling of our names may be different, but more or less sound the same. So, we are “tocayo” and “tocaya” to each other — or namesakes. There are occasions, though, when I call her St. Eliza.

Born Maria Eliza Cristobal Anson, Boots Anson Roa Rodrigo is the nicest, kindest, and most polite member of the Philippine entertainment industry. Writer-director Jose Javier Reyes calls her “Our Lady of Peace.”

She has no enemy, and no one would dare pick a fight with her, except — ugh, this is so embarrassing — this writer. But it was all a misunderstanding that was settled immediately. There was no exchange of harsh words. She simply explained her side — in the gentlest manner possible — while I threw a tantrum the whole time.

When the smoke cleared, she asked me in a very motherly tone: “O, galit ka pa ba sa akin? (Are you still mad at me?)” Sheepishly, I answered: “I wasn’t mad at you. It was just annoying that I was asked to attend this meeting (for an industry affair) when I am not actually needed here. And I had to wait two hours for nothing.” Neither of us was at fault. It was all a miscommunication.

That incident happened in July 2025. To this day, I still feel guilty about picking a fight with the “Virgin Mary.” Indeed, she is Santa Eliza, the most heavenly figure in this sinful world called entertainment.

Boots is the great-grandniece of Epifanio de los Santos, whose name we curse every day — no thanks to EDSA traffic. Her father was the acclaimed leading man Oscar Moreno. Her mother, the former Belen Cristobal, was from the groves of academe — a chemistry teacher at the University of the East. Now, we know why Boots became a rare combination of beauty and brains.

But for all that beauty and intelligence, Boots never became an airhead. She maintained her humility even at the peak of her career — when she was crowned Box-Office Queen in 1973 and a FAMAS Best Actress winner for Tatay na si Erap. At 28, she was already a TOWNS awardee — the female equivalent back then of the Ten Outstanding Young Men, or TOYM.

She has devoted more than half of her life to serving the Movie Workers Welfare Foundation, or Mowelfund. It is a thankless job that consumes a lot of her time — and energy. And energy is a blessing one conserves at 81, which is Boots’ present age. Mowelfund, if I may add, is not just a charitable institution for workers in showbiz. The Mowelfund Film Institute has trained a lot of our active movie practitioners who are now on their way to greatness.

As an industry leader, she has to confront a lot of challenges that can try one’s patience. Fortunately, patience is one of her greatest virtues. Boots Anson Roa Rodrigo is truly Santa Eliza.

But was she always this saintly? According to her, she had a mean streak as a child. During a fight with her brother, she threw an electric fan at him. Unlike now, electric fan units in those days were not made of plastic. A “ventilador,” which was how an electric fan was called back then, was manufactured in heavy steel.

Boots was also naughty when she was in grade school at the Assumption Convent. When she and other pupils were made to fall in line one time, she gently poked the blouse of the classmate in front of her with her fountain pen — with its cap removed! In a matter of seconds, the backside of her classmate’s blouse was stained with blue ink.

But at one point in her young life came an epiphany. She decided she would just be a good person. No, she wasn’t aiming for canonization — not even today at 81. Boots just wanted to say the correct things so as not to be offensive and perform good deeds without the promise of reward. Not here. Perhaps in heaven.

Prior to finishing her secondary education, she wanted to enter the nunnery. She prayed hard for guidance — from God and surely from the Assumption foundress, Marie Eugenie. The answer came when she was counseled by an Assumption nun who advised her to experience the world first outside of convent school. And so, she went to the University of the Philippines to take up Speech and Drama.

Her beauty, however, became a distraction — to the world. Every time she took the JD Liner bus to get to the UP campus in Diliman, all eyes would be on her. In school, she was a corps sponsor and winner of the highest distinction of beauty in UP — the Cadena de Amor.

Heaven surely must have been guiding her ever since. So that she didn’t become arrogant given her outstanding looks and scholastic merits, there was a time when her beauty failed her. Invited to test for a soap print ad, she flunked.

Decades later, though, she became the image model for Tender Care soap — both for print and television. Oh, where is the fairness in this world? Boots always had such fine skin she never grew a pimple in her life!

Her schoolgirl complexion was also what brought her to mainstream show business. When Baby O’Brien, the original host of the iconic show Dance-O-Rama, was pirated by ABS-CBN, the executives of the old Channel 5 network began looking for a replacement. They went from campus to campus in search of a coed who didn’t just look good but also spoke well. In UP, there was only one obvious choice: the campus beauty, Boots Anson. The search ended there.

At Dance-O-Rama, she and her co-host, Pete Roa, fell in love and eloped. Although she was already married with two children (two more kids followed), she remained a much sought-after television host even after her Dance-O-Ramastint. In 1968, she eventually embraced the movies — as a leading lady to Andy Poe in El Perro Gancho.

Now, this may shock you, but Boots actually appeared in a sex film called Mga Uhaw na Bulaklak, where she played a prostitute. Her one and only sex scene in the movie was done on a dining table — still with her clothes on. During the pictorial for the ad layout, while co-star Chanda Romero wore a two-piece bikini, Boots was in a long-sleeved blouse that she paired with the longest pair of shorts in the history of fashion.

Boots can truly be a prude. When she was invited to a poetry reading in Russia, along with Tommy Abuel and the late Nestor Torre, in 1980, she got paranoid about the supposed surveillance cameras that were said to be all over the hotel. Were there hidden cameras even in her room? Boots wasn’t sure. But she wasn’t taking things to chance.

Every time she took a shower, she made sure the lights in the bathroom were off. And even when she had to do Number Two in the toilet, she made sure she put a towel on her lap so nothing of her was captured by the camera — just in case there was one installed in the bathroom.

That Russian trip was unforgettable to Boots. On the day of the poetry reading, she went to a Moscow beauty salon to have her hair fixed in a neat bun. No thanks to the language barrier, she came out of the beauty parlor with Marissa Delgado curls.

So, who said that nice people are boring? Definitely not Boots.

This 30 January — her birthday — Boots Anson Roa Rodrigo is launching her book titled Grateful at the Club Filipino. As always, a portion of the sales will go to her favorite charity, Mowelfund. Surely, she has a lot to be grateful for in life. Given all her accomplishments that took so much of her time, she was able to raise a beautiful family with first husband Pete, who sadly died in 2007 after a long illness. In 2015, she found another round of happiness when she wed second husband Atty. King Rodrigo.

But what’s most enviable about Boots is her ability to fall asleep on command. Unlike her colleagues in show business who have to pop pills to bring down their adrenaline level after a day’s shoot, Boots doesn’t have any problem with sleep. Maybe that is why she has a sweet disposition in life.

It’s really true that God blesses the sleep of the just. Boots Anson Roa Rodrigo is the best proof of that.