From Manila to Siargao and back again, actress Nadine Lustre is in constant motion, ready to launch into full force. But, in some way, she has never felt more grounded

PHOTOGRAPHY Karl King Agu&ntilde;a
CREATIVE DIRECTION Loris Pe&ntilde;a
STYLING Yanna Lopez
&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sorry, I don&rsquo;t have makeup on right now,&rdquo; actress Nadine Lustre tells me over Google Meet before turning on her camera. She&rsquo;s wearing a cozy, white sweater, with perfectly imperfect beach waves framing her sun-kissed, glowing skin. She looks like she&rsquo;s just come from a long weekend in Siargao, an island in the Philippines that she also considers home.
But she&rsquo;s in Manila. She&rsquo;s been in Manila most of the time, contrary to the popular belief that she&rsquo;s perpetually barefoot on a beach somewhere. As plump and well-rested as she presents herself on video call, nothing about Lustre is quite what it looks like from the outside. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m exhausted,&rdquo; she admits candidly, mentioning that she&rsquo;s no longer as &ldquo;immortal&rdquo; as she once was.
&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been on a really crazy roller coaster just because every year is different, every month is different. I feel like I&rsquo;ve been thrown around too much&mdash;I&rsquo;m like a beach ball&nbsp;na kung saan-saan na ako napunta. I don&rsquo;t even know where I&rsquo;m at right now.&rdquo;

Lustre has come a long, long way from who she once was. Now 32 years old, with four new business ventures under her belt, she juggles entrepreneurship, film, and music&mdash;a true seasoned name in the local entertainment industry. But before her rise to stardom and multi-hyphenate status, Lustre was a wide-eyed 12-year-old hosting on RPN 9 and Disney Channel Asia. After signing on to Viva Entertainment at 16 and a brief girl group stint, Lustre would then skyrocket to nationwide fame after projects with former love team partner, James Reid. 
Lustre and Reid, then known as &ldquo;JaDine,&rdquo; were a force to be reckoned with throughout the 2010s. Ask any average Filipino household, and they&rsquo;ve most likely seen the pair&rsquo;s breakout hit Wattpad adaptation, Diary ng Panget (2014), and primetime ABS-CBN series On the Wings of Love (2015&ndash;2016). 
Lustre and Reid&rsquo;s professional partnership flourished into an off-screen, real-life relationship, becoming a cultural phenomenon that captured the hearts of millennials growing up at the time. But like all great love stories, it ran its course, with the pair announcing their breakup a couple of months before the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic hit the globe.

After the rapid whirlwind of her early twenties&mdash;the abrupt fame, her relationship, its highly publicized unraveling, and the loss of a beloved family member&mdash;Lustre did something quieter than anyone might have expected. She stepped back and exhaled. Then, slowly, she began again, on her own this time. 
The pandemic, for all its devastation, gave the actress something unexpected: stillness. She began making longer and longer trips to Siargao, where a handful of friends had already planted roots, trading Manila&rsquo;s relentless pace for salt air and the open sea. It was here, far from the city noise, that she found love once again in Christophe Bariou&mdash;her current partner and, as it would turn out, her business collaborator. Together, they built Ver De Siargao, a fully plant-based restaurant, along with a winery (Maison Bukana Wines) and a coconut milk company (Dehusk)&mdash; ventures that reflect, in many ways, the life Lustre has been quietly constructing for herself away from the spotlight. 
Lustre admits it&rsquo;s an entirely different experience working with Bariou. She&rsquo;s the creative who&rsquo;ll sit with a menu redesign for a month, while he&rsquo;s the operator who needs decisions as soon as possible. Left brain, right brain. She enlightens, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s a Virgo, and I&rsquo;m a Scorpio, so we&rsquo;re both kind of trying to be the alpha. It&rsquo;s that kind of energy. There&rsquo;s always a clash, but we work our way through it. The good thing about the relationship is that we each contribute something that the other one cannot put on the table.&rdquo;

&ldquo;He wants everything done quickly, and he gets things done,&rdquo; Lustre says, beaming from ear to ear as she talks about Bariou. &ldquo;I mean, I get things done too, but it&rsquo;ll take a while. At least maganda &lsquo;yong output!&rdquo;
Lustre has never been the type to stay quiet when she has something to say. It&rsquo;s been a quality her fans know well, and one that earned her the affectionate title of &ldquo;President Nadine&rdquo; on numerous memes. She campaigned for Leni Robredo during the 2022 presidential elections. She backed Rep. Leila de Lima&rsquo;s partylist in 2025, but what sets her apart from the typical celebrity endorser is what she asked for in return: not a paycheck, but a seat at the table.

&ldquo;I know everything that I do has a ripple effect. Whatever I say or do, I make sure that I think it through.&rdquo;

Rather than accepting a talent fee, she negotiated for something she found more useful, which was the candidates&rsquo; cooperation in pushing for bills aligned with her beliefs, including legislation on environmental protection and animal welfare. She, with Bariou by her side, accompanied De Lima at the Batasang Pambansa when those measures were formally filed in February of this year. For Lustre, her outspokenness and political engagement are simply an extension of who she already is.&nbsp;

&ldquo;I know everything that I do has a ripple effect. Whatever I say or do, I make sure that I think it through,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s important is that I don&rsquo;t step on anyone&rsquo;s toes, I don&rsquo;t hurt anyone, and I don&rsquo;t affect people negatively. And as much as I can, if whatever I say would do good, then I would push through with it.&rdquo; 
That same intentionality carries over into the projects she chooses to take on, now that she&rsquo;s established a solid footing in the industry. In her 2021 cover story for L&rsquo;Officiel Philippines, Lustre said that she&rsquo;s &ldquo;done with the romcom.&rdquo; And over the past five years, she&rsquo;s done exactly that&mdash;pivoting away from the genre that defined her earlier career, and toward darker, more visceral roles. Her work in the last half of the decade included leading two Mikhail Red horror films, portraying a drug-addicted socialite in Uninvited (2024), and stepping into the shoes of a young, inexperienced mother in Call Me Mother (2025). Lustre&rsquo;s work in Uninvited earned her a much-deserved FAMAS Award in 2025.

&ldquo;If you&rsquo;re just really passionate about something, it doesn&rsquo;t matter how long you&rsquo;ve been in the industry or how old you are. Just being able to show your love and being passionate about it really goes a long way.&rdquo; &nbsp;

Through these roles, Lustre ended up sharing the screen with not only love interests but also some of the biggest names in Philippine cinema, such as Aga Muhlach, Vilma Santos, and Vice Ganda. It was also while working alongside these veterans that something clicked for her.

&ldquo;If you&rsquo;re just really passionate about something, it doesn&rsquo;t matter how long you&rsquo;ve been in the industry or how old you are. Just being able to show your love and being passionate about it really goes a long way,&rdquo; Lustre muses. &ldquo;Ate [Vilma Santos] has all these awards already and is doing so many things, and yet she still finds her way back to what she&rsquo;s really passionate about. It&rsquo;s reaffirming, really, what I already know. It doesn&rsquo;t matter where life has taken you; you will always go back to that same passion.&rdquo;
Lustre is far from being a new, fresh-faced darling of local showbiz, or even that cool artista with an exceptionally curated Instagram feed, and she&rsquo;ll be the first to tell you so. She gets candid about what it means to be in her thirties in an industry that has watched her grow up in real time. She enjoys it, mostly&mdash; the self-awareness, the clarity, the ability to simply stay home on a Friday night without the fear of missing out. She even laughs while recounting a time her 25-year-old friend told her he was unfamiliar with 90s songs. 
&ldquo;He was like,&lsquo;Really,what&rsquo;s that?&rsquo;I&rsquo;m like,what do you mean you don&rsquo;t know 90s music? Oh, because I was born in 2000.&rdquo; She shakes her head, still amused. &ldquo;The age is showing,&rdquo; she says, and she has decided she is fine with that. Fine with the more mature roles that come her way, fine with no longer being cast as the heroine in a school uniform or the bright-eyed, optimistic new hire. She has come to terms with aging gracefully, not as a concession, but a choice. &nbsp;

But she is also learning, sometimes reluctantly, that her body has its own opinions about the pace she keeps. Lustre lists them all, one by one. Acidity flares up more than it used to. Intense stress triggers fevers. One sleepless night now costs her three to four days of recovery. &ldquo;I was always used to just going hard,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;Keep going, not sleeping, working nonstop. And all of that has finally caught up to me now.&rdquo; 
It is somewhat of a rude awakening that she is channeling into her art, too. She discusses the importance of having to look out for her health, really take care of her body, and work on personal matters that she didn&rsquo;t explicitly name during the interview. Her upcoming album, due in July, is a departure from the dreamy, cloud-like quality of her last record, Wildest Dreams. In this new age, Lustre is more of the earth than the ether. As she puts it in her own words, she&rsquo;s &ldquo;back on the ground.&rdquo; From the sound of it, she intends to stay there. 
When she last spoke to L&rsquo;Officiel Philippines as a cover girl, the first for the title, Lustre had yet to take on more acting jobs beyond her usual rom-coms. Now, she&rsquo;s won awards for unconventional roles. Her schedule is launching into full speed ahead for the next quarter of 2026. Lustre flies to Siargao in April for her anticipated Viu series alongside Alden Richards, then dropping her new album in July, and somewhere in between she wants to pursue ventures in interior design (&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t want to say too much about it yet,&rdquo; she tells me in a subtly excited tone).

The interview is coming to a close, and I ask Lustre what she would name this chapter of her life. She takes a brief moment to think about it. 
&ldquo;I know it doesn&rsquo;t sound great. It&rsquo;s a little silly,&rdquo; she says. &ldquo;But the first thing that comes to mind is &lsquo;go, go, go&rsquo;. With my current situation, it&rsquo;s like I have nothing else. Like there&rsquo;s nothing else for me to do but to go.&rdquo; 
We both laugh about it together, because it is funny. She enunciates &ldquo;go, go, go,&rdquo; in a sing-songy manner. Lustre further goes on to mention that she can&rsquo;t lie about the fact that she&rsquo;s really tired. We agree that it&rsquo;s not the most glamorous title. But it&rsquo;s honest. And honesty, as it turns out, is exactly what this version of Nadine Lustre is about. She&rsquo;s exhausted, but she&rsquo;s going anyway, and somehow, she&rsquo;s doing it all with grace.

DIGITAL EDITOR Maura Rodriguez
FASHION ASSOCIATE Frances Laman&nbsp;
MAKEUP&nbsp;Jelly Eugenio&nbsp;
HAIR Paul Nebres&nbsp;
PRODUCTION DESIGNER Justine Arcega Bumanlag&nbsp;
VIDEO DIRECTOR Heidi Bayani&nbsp;
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Jeron Ellana&nbsp;
PHOTOGRAPHER&rsquo;S ASSISTANT Jom Ablay, Robyn Josue&nbsp;
LIGHTING ASSISTANT Antonio Baylon, Rossman Hitosis&nbsp;
SET MEN Jan Abal, John Amon, Olderico Bondoc Jr, Mark Anthony Bondoc, Rodel Bondoc, Geber Cunanan, Nick Narte
VIDEO ASSISTANTS Edrey Paul, John Hero, Niña Garcia&nbsp;

Grace Under Pressure: Nadine Lustre

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