Christopher de Leon admits he once ‘lost everything’

MANILA – Christopher de Leon admitted he was once blinded by fame and that sent him to the end of his rope.

In an interview with Korina Sanchezde Leon shared that this happened during the peak of his career when he was younger, to the point that film producers shied away from him.

“Nobody wanted to get me because I was a pain in the neck. Because there was a time, it was my producer who woke me up in my room. ‘Wake up, we have work to do!’ So I got a headache. They shied away from me,” he said.

De Leon he was really obnoxious and rowdy at that time and that lasted for five to seven years.

“I lost everything. The house has been mortgaged, my cars have been crashed. I had zero balance in the bank. I have reached there,” he said.

When he realized what was happening, the veteran actor decided to change his ways.

Asked what his inspiration was in his recovery, he said: “My children, aside from a lot of things. You have to survive. You have a family. You will realize that you are fortunate to have all of this and you’re just throwing it away. Can not. Incorrect.”

Apart from this challenging phase of his life, de Leon also faced multiple ordeals when one of his children and his wife Sandy Andolong got sick.

“[My son] was in the States then. He was rushed to [the hospital]. When we saw him, he was at the ICU with all the tubes. He was unconscious. In the pictures we see, ‘I think you’re losing weight!’ ‘I’m just on a diet.’ so okay One time, he just passed out and called that there’s something wrong,” he narrated.

“My face was in the corner of the wall already, praying. I need help here. The situation is super overwhelming. You can no longer grasp. I’m already on the wall. There was a commotion already, code blue and all that. He was able to recover from all of that. So far so good, nothing for eight years already,” he added.

As for Andolong, de Leon said his wife had a kidney transplant just as his son was making a recovery.

While saying these experiences certainly made him a more sensitive actor, de Leon is certain what he went through is something that cannot be translated into film.

“You can’t film what happened. It was hard to act then. You cannot explain the feeling, the emotion, the intensity of what was happening. You cannot film that. I can’t pretend that for sure,” he said, adding that these experiences have made him into a more caring person.