Ian Pangilinan
BIOGRAPHY
Ian Pangilinan (born September 9, 1997) is a Filipino actor whose first leading screen role is the one that brings him here: Jose Vladimir “Vlad” Austria in Gaya sa Pelikula, released internationally as Like in the Movies (2020), the eight-episode Globe Studios series directed by Jaime Habac Jr.
He came to it from theatre rather than from television. A management engineering graduate of Ateneo de Manila University, he performed with Ateneo Blue Repertory in Spring Awakening (2019) as Melchior and appeared in Reasons to be Pretty the same year, then played Rovic in the musical adaptation of Tabing Ilog in 2020. He has returned to the stage since, taking both Roger Davis and Mark Cohen in productions of Rent and playing Chris Abueva in Bar Boys: The Musical in 2024.
Screen work followed the series quickly. He has appeared in the television dramas Nina Nino (2021), Love in 40 Days and K-Love (both 2022), Royal Blood (2022) and Nakarehas na Puso (2023), and in the films Family Matters (2022), Five Breakups and a Romance (2023) and The Loved One (2026). He is represented by Cornerstone.
His awards record is short and specific: a nomination for New Movie Actor of the Year at the PMPC Star Awards for Movies in 2024, and a win in the same year’s Movie Ensemble Acting category.
One point of frequent confusion is worth settling on the page rather than leaving to inference. He and his co-lead Paolo Pangilinan share a surname and are not related. The Rappler profile published when the series launched states this directly, and notes that the two of them checked.
Where this record is thin: his theatre credits are recorded by production and role but mostly without dates or venues, which is normal for stage work and is why so little of it appears in filmographies. No official social account was verified for this page, and no agency biography giving height or similar details was located.
The lead pair of Like in the Movies arrived from opposite directions, and it shows in what each of them had already done.
Pangilinan had been working in Manila theatre for two years before the camera found him, in Spring Awakening, in Reasons to be Pretty, in a musical Tabing Ilog. His co-lead had never acted at all. A production willing to build a romance on that combination is making a bet on contrast rather than on matched experience.
It is also a reminder of how invisible stage work is. Two years of it left almost no trace a filmography would pick up, and a reader looking only at screen credits would have concluded in 2020 that he was a newcomer too.
PROFILE DETAILS
- Pronouns
- he/him
- Born
- (Age 29)
- Birthplace
- Mandaluyong, Philippines
- Gender
- Male
- Profession
- Nationality
- Debut
- 2020 · Gaya sa Pelikula / Like in the Movies (2020) as Jose Vladimir 'Vlad' Austria, his first screen role
- Agency / Label
- Cornerstone
- Years Active
- 2020-present
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