Iya Villania Road to Stardom

Iya Villania, real name Raelene Elaine Ebaler Villanía was born June 29, 1986 that grew up in Sydney, Australia. Although both of her parents, Ray and Elena Villanía, are from a Filipino descent, her nationality is Fililipino Australian since she was born in Camperdown, New South Wales, Australia. She's the youngest among the two other female siblings named Rhoda and Sheila.

At age of 8 she already learned to play a piano, but later on began singing due to the influence of her dad's fondness of playing karaoke. At an early age of 13, she started fronting Filipino acts with the likes of popular Filipino singers such as Pops Fernandez, Martin Nievera, the APO Hiking Society in her hometown. The young Iya was wooed to be a professional singer in the Philippines by Arnold Vegafria, her current manager. So she left Australia with her mother to move to the Philippines to try her luck as a singer. She got the celebrity screen name, Iya, from an anime-inspired endorsement stint by Globe Telecom.

The move wasn't a smooth transition for her at first, she had a hard time to catch up with the language and getting around the city. Also her auditions and VTR-tests were giving no encouraging results. Villania finished her secondary study at Colegio San Agustin-Makati and graduated on March 2004. She took up AB Psychology at the De La Salle University-Manila and graduated on February of 2009.

She first appeared on TV, hosting an interactive texting game show by the IBC-13 TV. This exposure helped her land a couple of roles on GMA 7's hit TV Episodes such as "Click" and "Walang Hanggan". She was later offered a VJ job to host a music channel subsidiary called "MYX", and numerous shows such as "Only You", "Seasons of Love", "Wowowee", "ASAP Mania" by ABS-CBN, GMA 7's rival network. She also appeared on other network shows such as "Us Girls" and "U Can Dance" for Studio 23, "Mysmatch" and "OMG!" for TV5. She was also seen in numerous TV guestings for shows like "Komiks", "Love Spell", "Your Song" and game shows "Deal or No Deal" and "Wheel of Fortune".

Her debut movie, "A Beautiful Life", under Regal Films and directed by multi-award winning director Gil Portes, she played a role along side stellar actresses such as Dina Bonnevie, Amy Austria and Gloria Romero. In the movie "Aishite Imasu 1941" under award winning director, Joel Lamangan, she was nominated as best supporting actress in the 2004 Metro Manila Film Festival for the war drama movie. She was later seen in movies such as "Exodus: Tales of the Enchanted Kingdom", "Paano Kita Iibigin", "Pamahiin", "When I Met U", and "Shake, Rattle and Roll XI".

Her first theater acting gig was Footloose, a musical production based on the 1983 movie of the same name, she sang the supremely upbeat "Footloose" theme song. She also auditioned a film by Lori Singer to play a role of a rebellious pastor's daughter named Ariel. She played along side rnb singer and actor Jay-R. She sang and danced her way thru stellar soundtracks like "Let's Here it For the Boy", "Holding Out for a Hero", the love theme "Almost Paradise".

Her record "Almost Paradise" with Jay-R also became the carrier song for the musical's album release. In line with her endorsement for Rose Online, she recorded the game's carrier single "Good To Be Me" and performed it during the game's official launching. After a long-wait of 6 years, her first studio album under Viva Records was released and, appropriately, entitled "Finally!" with "My First Broken Heart" as the carrier single.

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Iya Villania Road to Stardom