The actress stands on the shoulders of her relatives, including the late icons Pilita Corrales and Nora Aunor. Yet she carries on her family&rsquo;s legacy while completely rewriting the rules of what it means to be a celebrity.

PHOTOGRAPHY Cenon at Mav
CREATIVE DIRECTION AND STYLING Yanna Lopez
In 1971, Jane Fonda starred in the neo-noir thriller Klute, playing a New York City call girl who becomes involved in a missing persons case. The role became her career breakthrough, earning her the Academy Award for Best Actress and establishing her as a fashion icon, with her signature shag, sleek trench coats, boots, and sequined dresses transcending time and generations.
Stepping into the dramatic, intricately designed space, Janine Gutierrez leans against a wall in sleek leather from Louis Vuitton&rsquo;s Fall/Winter 2025 collection, her bold shag completing the look as she channels Jane Fonda, the Hollywood icon she has long professed love and admiration for.
Then Janine tilts her head slightly, and the resemblance becomes unmistakable &mdash; that of her grandmother, the late Pilita Corrales, whose storied singing career spanned 135 albums, two countries, and nearly seven decades.
It was the parallel between these women, both with huge influences on her career, that inspired her to embark on her passion project, a documentary chronicling the life and career of her grandmother. &ldquo;I always talk about this, but I'm a super fan of Jane Fonda. I watched her documentary called Five Acts, and then I just really was reminded of Mamita,&rdquo; she tells L&rsquo;Officiel.
&ldquo;Ever since, it was in my head. There&rsquo;s so much about her story that people don't really know, especially the younger generation. At the same time, there&rsquo;s so much to learn from her story. I&rsquo;m just at the point where I can bring to life the stories that matter most to me,&rdquo; she adds.

<h3 class="p1">REDEFINING HER ROLE</h3>
Coming from a prominent showbiz family means Janine stands on the shoulders of famous family members, but she&rsquo;s long broken out of the shadow of her relatives. For starters, Janine won the Guillermo Box Office Award for&nbsp;her chilling yet nuanced portrayal of scorned wife, Iris Buenavidez, in the teleserye Lavender Fields. It&rsquo;s the first time she&rsquo;s played a villainous role, one that she admits she was hesitant to do at first.
&ldquo;They put a lot of pressure on the word kontrabida, like it&rsquo;s something hard. A lot of people also think of it as a downgrade. I was like, &lsquo;Oh my gosh, does this mean I didn&rsquo;t do well enough in the last show?&rsquo; So I told myself, I really have to do well here. Their challenge was, &lsquo;If you can pull this off, then we&rsquo;ll know you can handle any role,&rsquo;&rdquo; she says.
Janine has come a long way from her beginnings in 2011. Her Instagram page now reads &ldquo;redefining my path&mdash;in my own time, on my own terms,&rdquo; a description that she says was a recent change.

&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve always been intentional, especially in the past five years, with all my work and projects. I&rsquo;m also so happy to have met like-minded people and to be trusted with roles that are both complicated and challenging,&rdquo; she says, adding that it&rsquo;s important for her that any project she takes on &ldquo;always carries a value that matters to me.&rdquo; Take the Pilita documentary, for example. Here, Janine slips into the role of producer for the first time, a shift away from being in front of the camera to being behind it. She&rsquo;s working with an A-list team, too, with Voyage Studios&rsquo; Baby Ruth Villarama and Chuck Gutierrez, fresh off their win from the Doc Edge Festival in New Zealand for their West Philippine Sea documentary, Food Delivery, and is also behind the 2016 award-winning film, Sunday Beauty Queen.
&ldquo;[Director Baby Ruth] spent time with my Lola. They spent time at home on her birthday. So, I'm sure that she can bring a very close personal touch to her story, which is larger than life. What I really want is for people to know her, how she is as a person offstage, and how that translates into her work. But at the heart of it, she was just a girl who needed to survive, so she had to work. Her story is so inspiring and relatable to all Filipinos.

Side Trunk Vibe MM bag, belted turtleneck dress, and Blossom sandals; all LOUIS VUITTON

&ldquo;I&rsquo;m never putting myself in a position where I didn&rsquo;t fight for what I wanted because I was scared.&rdquo;

The actress and now producer has also learned much in the process &mdash; discovering, for one, that producing the life story of someone so close to her came with its own challenges, especially as her grandmother&rsquo;s health began to falter.
&ldquo;This was a person so close to me, one of the most important people in my life. In the end, she wasn&rsquo;t as strong as she used to be. I was battling between myself as a granddaughter and as a producer. With her health struggles, I really wanted to protect her, but I also didn&rsquo;t want to bother her. I didn&rsquo;t want cameras near her. But at the same time, a documentary is all about truth and exposing the realities of a person,&rdquo; she shares.
It was the guidance of Baby Ruth and Chuck, and the sensitivities they brought to the film&rsquo;s development, that allowed them to push forward. &ldquo;I completely trusted them,&rdquo; she says.
Pilita may have gone, but her legacy will live on, immortalized in film. Janine says there&rsquo;s still so much to work on &mdash; from the interviews of family members and people&rsquo;s lives she touched.
Even in her passing, Janine&rsquo;s grandmother continues to impart important life lessons to her. &ldquo;[When we were at] her wake&mdash;she&rsquo;s such a big star, but it was so solemn. It really showed me the value of relationships over wealth and fame. Yes, she was famous. But she also built such substantial relationships, life-changing ones with people she mentored and discovered. In the end, that was her legacy more than anything.&rdquo;
It was also this year when Janine lost her maternal grandmother, National Artist and the Philippines&rsquo; superstar, Nora Aunor.
&ldquo;They both came from super humble beginnings. My Mama Guy sold water in the train station in Bicol, and Mamita started singing when she was a teenager because her father had passed away, and they had to make money. It&rsquo;s such a relatable Filipino story. We all want to work because we want to help our families... But at the same time, I think the magic happens when you find work that you&rsquo;re truly passionate about. So that passion and that talent, combined with your purpose, is what really gives you a fulfilling life and a fulfilling legacy.&rdquo;

Pleat collar fitted dress, Monogram Takeover tights, Gala pumps, and Capucines Nano bag; all LOUIS VUITTON

<h3 class="p1">LIVING WITH INTENTION</h3>
Having close and intimate access to some of the most famous people in the industry has made her reflect on her own path. &ldquo;It wasn&rsquo;t really the fame that made them happy. It was always the work that they liked, the work that they enjoyed, and the relationships they made along the way,&rdquo; she says.
Fame seems to be written in the stars for Janine, but she&rsquo;s chasing something more profound than that: purpose. Purpose is what led her to various roles and experiences, allowing her to explore the depths of the craft and her industry beyond the confines of an archetypal leading lady.
There&rsquo;s one project that she&rsquo;s tight-lipped about as of writing, but one that she&rsquo;s clearly excited about. At the time of our interview, she was heading into her last day of filming a series she&rsquo;s been working on for the past six months.
She can&rsquo;t share much of the series set to debut next year, other than the fact that it&rsquo;s an &ldquo;adventure-thriller kind of story, a really exciting project, and I&rsquo;m working with some people that I've worked with before and a lot of people that I'm working with for the first time.&rdquo;

Stud strap dress and V for Vuitton pearl and metal earrings, both LOUIS VUITTON

"Magic happens when you find work that you&rsquo;re truly passionate about."

Is it anything at all like the previous thriller teleseryes she&rsquo;s worked on, like Dirty Linen and Lavender Fields? &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; she says, careful not to give away anything. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s super different.&rdquo;
It&rsquo;s reflective of Janine&rsquo;s growth, where she feels she has more liberty over the trajectory of her career, a lesson she learned the hard way when she was younger.
The actress describes going through an identity crisis at 27, when she constantly sought the validation of others for her next career moves.
&ldquo;I hated it. I didn't want to be there anymore. I was miserable &mdash; going through that experience of regretting not being able to be strong enough to articulate what I want...I'm never putting myself in a position where I didn't fight for what I wanted because I was scared,&rdquo; she shares.

<h3 class="p1">PATH TO FREEDOM</h3>
Today, Janine is firmly at the helm&mdash;steering her own path and speaking out on advocacies close to her heart, such as her work with the World Wildlife Fund.
She also finds this same sense of freedom in travel&mdash;a fitting ode to Louis Vuitton&rsquo;s heritage, deeply rooted in the art of voyage and reflected in its Fall/Winter collections. &ldquo;Travel is always a dream come true,&rdquo; Janine shares, recalling that her first trip abroad was to Hong Kong for work when she was 24.
&ldquo;People find it hard to believe, but we couldn&rsquo;t afford to travel [when we were younger]. The whole time growing up, I really wanted to travel to the point that the course I took was to become a diplomat. Travel for me now means freedom.&rdquo;
Janine&rsquo;s career has taken her to places far beyond Hong Kong &mdash; there&rsquo;s Paris and New York for fashion weeks, and Venice for the La Biennale di Venezia, where her film with Lav Diaz, the four-hour Phantosmia, was screened.
The actress, the consummate film buff, describes Venice as &ldquo;a Disneyland for film lovers.&rdquo;
&ldquo;It's on an island, and the whole island is the venue for the film festival. You just walk, and then there are all these events happening. So we watched Beetlejuice at 9 in the morning, and then at 1, we watched the Maria film of Angelina Jolie. I was like, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.&rdquo;
Janine also takes pride in seeing a growing audience line up for their film, which they shot in the town of Sampaloc, Quezon. During the Phantosmia screening, &ldquo;As the film was about to end, there was someone who dropped a note in front of Direk Lav Diaz. It said, &lsquo;This is an absolute masterpiece.&rsquo; It was like a nudge that you&rsquo;re on the right path,&rdquo; Janine shares. Moments like these ground her in the weight of the work, yet also lift her with the quiet assurance of purpose &mdash; where gravity meets grace.

PRODUCERS Loris Pe&ntilde;a, Maura Rodriguez, Yanna Lopez, and Frances Laman
MODEL Gelo of Monarq
HAIR Jay Aquino
MAKEUP Anthea Bueno
VIDEO Aijalonica Lei
FASHION ASSOCIATE Frances Laman 
SHOOT ASSISTANT Teresita Gabat
SHOT ON LOCATION Medusa at The Palace

Gravity Meets Grace: Janine Gutierrez

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