Friday, April 6, 2007

The Heart of Me


Love Marie Payawal Ongpauco, better known in her stage name as Heart Evangelista, is a Filipina actress, singer, model and VJ.


Childhood
She was born on February 14, 1985 to parents Reynaldo and Cecilia Ongpauco, she was the youngest in her family, with one brother (Miguel) and four sisters (Lisa, Marjorie, Michelle and Camille).
She comes from the Ongpauco clan of Barrio Fiesta fame. Her uncle (Rod Ongpauco) is the founder of the Barrio Fiesta restaurant chain while her father founded several Barrio Fiesta branches in San Francisco. She grew up and studied in the United States and her family moved back in her late toddler years to the Philippines


Religion / Charity Work

Heart in one of her mall shows to support her Heart Can foundation.
Since early 2006, Heart has been very vocal about her conversion from Catholic to Born Again Christian. She attends the Victory Christian Fellowship. She has always stated that her conversion is the reason she moved from the Philippine's titanic talent organization/agency Star Magic (backed by mega-media-corporation ABS-CBN) to the small & independent religious/secular Genesis.
Since September 2006, Heart has started taking on a humanitarian role and founded Heart Can, a foundation to help children with respiratory diseases. The Heart Can foundation is taking her through a series of mall shows and has distributed several cans for donations in order to raise money for the young children to be benefited by the charity.
Even if her transfer from Star Magic to Genesis has caused her to lose projects and her popularity has declined from what it was before, Heart says she has no regrets because she needed the spiritual counsel that Genesis could provide her. She has also stated that she is very happy with her life, "not just working but having...living a life."