REGINE Velasquez isn't kidding when she says she wants to look like the girl next door. Sitting at the Ramada's poolside, casually dressed in beige, munching on fruit and fretting about her make-up running, she hardly cuts a megastar figure.
Yet this is the same woman who is arguably the biggest selling pan-Asian artist. The first singer from the region to conquer markets as diverse as Taiwan and Indonesia, Philippines-born Regine is being championed as the first all-Asian celebrity. Despite it being an English-language production, her album Listen Without Prejudice is approaching triple platinum sales in Taiwan (70,000 units sold so far), far outstripping the latest releases by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. And similar success has followed in Korea, Indonesia and Singapore as the Regine bandwagon barrels on.
Hong Kong audiences will know her as the other half of Canto-pop star Jacky Cheung Hok-yau's English duet In Love With You, but she didn't turn a single head the day I met her. The reason: 24-year-old Regine is a chameleon-like figure, talented putty in the hands of a record company attempting to do what has never been done before: create an artist with something for everyone in Asia.
'At first I wasn't worried about her songs or her voice, but only about her looks,' admits Alex Chan, the head of Polygram's international artists division and the man who 'discovered' Regine.
'We did some photos, we went down to the Philippines and looked at her without make-up. She's actually very Asian. She can put on the Filipino stuff and look very Filipino, but when she did the duet they thought she looked Chinese. She has the Asian look.' 'My grandmother is half Chinese and half Spanish,' Regine explains, before moving on to the sensitive question of packaging.
'Yeah. They tell me what I should basically look like, but not what to wear. I have an idea ... they wanted me to look like a girl next door, that I should be plain because I'm like that, I'm plain.' So she's prepared to sacrifice her own identity? 'A little bit,' she says, shrugging. 'I don't mind. Anyway I have established myself in the Philippines so it's all right for me to go out and establish a career in Asia.' Before we get too wrapped up in the idea of Regine as a walking, talking, platinum-selling living doll, it's worth pointing out she really can sing. Listen Without Prejudice may be stuffed with ballads and 'safe' numbers ('she has a good image, voice and technique,' Mr Chan says), but Regine really lets rip within their confines - a reminder of her pedigree at home.
By the time Mr Chan saw her, at a joint concert with Manila heart-throb Gary Valenciano, she was already a seven-year showbiz veteran of television specials, platinum albums, and rabid paparazzi attention.