Alfie Anido


Alfonso Serrano Anido, better known as Alfie Anido, was a popular Filipino matinee idol best remembered for his death at the age of twenty-two.

Biography

Anido was born on December 30, 1959 in Manila. He was the eldest of the four children of Alberto Anido and Sarah Serrano, both Spanish Mestizo. He was also the brother of Albert Anido, another Filipino actor. He was also a fashion and commercial model before he became a contract star for Regal Films, a leading Filipino film production company. He was dubbed as one of the Regal Babies, along with then-young actors such as Gabby Concepcion, William Martinez, Albert Martinez, Maricel Soriano, Snooky Serna, and Dina Bonnevie. He was famously linked with Bonnevie, his co-star in the 1980 camp classic Temptation Island. At the time of his entry into show business, he was in college at the Ateneo de Manila University studying management.

Death

Anido died on December 30, 1981, the night of his 22nd birthday at his home in Bel-Air, Makati. The official version, contemporaneously reported in the mainstream Manila media, was that Anido had been shot. This version has not been officially or authoritatively contradicted up to this day. However, immediately after his death, rumors quickly spread that Anido was actually murdered, and that such fact was covered up owing to the prominence of the personalities allegedly involved. Suspicion fell on the family of an ex-girlfriend whose father was a high-ranking government official, Minister of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile. The rumor gained traction in Manila, which was then under the throes of the authoritarian rule of Ferdinand Marcos, whose government controlled the mass media during that period. Jack Enrile, the brother of Anido's then girlfriend Katrina Enrile, was rumored to have shot Anido but has denied any involvement in the actor's death.
Other versions on the death of Anido were printed in the alternative press such as the Philippine Collegian, the official student organ of the University of the Philippines, a hotbed of anti-Marcos activism.

Filmography

Film