YOU can’t go around the city these days without running into Sam Milby. The 22-year-old actor-slash-singer-slash-all around nice guy is even more ubiquitous than he was when we first featured him on the cover of the first issue of ONE PHILIPPINES last March.

Why, just the other day, at the grocery, we found him by the freezer section, flashing his shy guy grin – hawking,

get this, Sam’s Hotdog. The fact that he was pushing an actual hotdog brand, manufactured by industrial biggie RFM, and he grinned from a glossy two-dimensional POS, only points to how the good-looking Fil-Am from the Midwest has burrowed his way even closer to where we are.

Today, Sam endorses no less than 13 products and his mug – pretty, pleasant – is never far away, from posters to billboards to advertisements. Rivaled perhaps only by Kris Aquino and Piolo Pascual in the product endorsement department, Sam pushes not only hotdogs but Jollibee burgers, lends his chompers to Close-up toothpaste, dons flattering frames for Excutive Optical, flexes for Bench clothing, allows his face on the actual packaging of Dermablend Papaya Orange Soap. Plus, there are vitamin supplements, backpacks, celphone networks. Then, he has something called sponsors backing him including The Belo Medical Group, Gold’s Gym and GBX.

So we’re thinking that this may be why Sam, reserved but ever-present, agrees to meet at Starbucks at the newish Greenhills Theater shopping mall. It’s as public a place as one can think of but maybe it was okay because it was weekday.

But we look at the endless swarm of late afternoon shoppers, kids fresh out of school, and aimless strollers and begin thinking how we’re supposed to manage the wide-open venue. There are no private corners inside Starbucks. In fact, the shop is full, mildly chaotic. Outside, the mugginess melts our make-up as we commandeer a table with a full-view of people coming and going. We want to spot Sam before the horde does. Sneak in a few Qs before we are mobbed, or seeing that this was the more blasé part of town, perhaps occasional interruptions for pictures, autographs, or the rude stare.

We are mapping our defensive strat, when the phone rings. It’s Leah from ABS-CBN Talent Center and she wants us to meet Sam at the lobby of the Music Museum upstairs, where Sam is a guest in the concert of Danita Paner, actress Daisy Romualdez’s other daughter (the first being singer Tina Paner). Okay, we say. Better, we add, secretly disappointed we can’t register his effect on the crowd.

Ngarag…but in a good way

Since he got himself first noticed in Pinoy Big Brother in July of 2005, Sam Milby’s career has been incredibly… ngarag. He has appeared in two top-grossing movies, released an album, appears in ASAP ’06 and Pinoy Dream Academy, stars in the soap, Maging Sino Ka Man, and scoots the world for live shows including Renditions, a show in Seattle on November 4 with Rica Peralejo and Piolo Pascual. In fact , he is booked solid until December of this year.

“That’s every day,” he emphasizes.

When he finally appears for our interview, racing up the steps of the Music Museum, he looks a little bushed, expelling a quick gust as he makes the lobby, his costume slug over his shoulder.

“Sam!” we yell, holding up a copy of the first issue of ONE PHILIPPINES with him on the cover. He stops, looks back, grins, and then his manager hustles him on. The grin floors us. “We’ll be back,” his manager says. “We’ll just get this stuff out of the way.”

In a few, Leah returns to tell us Sam is in make-up.

We’re not going anywhere, we assure her. This interview has been a, well, “beach” to get together. We’re staying the night if we have to.

But Sam strides in a few minutes later, lanky as the corn fields in Ohio where he grew up.

So what’s in store for his Renditions concert in Seattle, we dive in.

“Oh,” he gropes, “…fun.”

Personal fun is something Sam has had very little of the past year, given his schedule. Last week, he tells us, he’s had an average of zero to two hours of sleep. And he wasn’t kidding. As the lead star of the new soap ABS-CBN soap Maging Sino Ka Man, in which he stars opposite Anne Curtis, Sam has had to run roughshod over his schedule.

“Since I’m one the lead actors, I’m in almost every scene so shooting has been tough,” he admits.

It’s also been a test of his fluency in Tagalog.
“ Mas magaling siyempre,” when we ask about his Tagalog.

How does he practice?

“Ahm…ahhh, parang nag-usap kasama ng mga kaibigan. Kasi..walang…oras talaga…kasama…ng…guro,” he struggles through, a real trouper.

“I know no one uses guro,” he explains hastily. “But there’s no time to learn with a teacher. Uhm…nag-usap…minsan…sa Tagalog…para…matuto. Learn as I go.”

Stardom on the go

Which is probably the motto of every starlet – male and female – who’s ever been sucked, or allowed themselves to, into the star-making machinery.

The iron stays hot for a millisecond (forget 15 minutes), and the aspirational horde must suck it in, strike boldly and hope self-betterment occurs along the way.

“I look at it as I’ve been given something great and I hope we can use this to help influence the younger generation and to be good influence and I now I’ve been given this for some reason and I hope can use it for a good cause.”

So what is it you really want to achieve with stardom?

“Of course having money is always a good thing to be able to support a family in the future. But ultimately, just to keep improving. My ultimate dream of course would be Hollywood. Any actor’s ultimate dream would be Hollywood.”

Any game plan for this?

“No. Actually I didn’t even have a game plan for here. I always dreamed of being in showbiz bit I didn’t have a game plan for it.”

Neither it seems is making sure he has some time for himself. Dating, for instance.

“No,” he answers slowly, ruefully. “I don’t really go out… I just… basically… work. I’m a workaholic. I figured to make the most of what I have now because this won’t last forever.”

And wannabes storming the gates of stardom are a multitude. “The turnover rate in the Philippines, talagang mabilis, di ba? Yung mga bagong artistas, they’re here then they’re gone and I don’t wanna be one of those but if I am, and I happen to last not as long as I hope for, I might as well take advantage of what I have now, I guess.”

Which means foregoing sleep or making do with little, being the master of the two-minute power nap, downing his vitamins, glugging coffee.

If he can sneak it in, he’ll catch a movie, listen to some music, break out his PSP. Just don’t ask him to watch TV. “That’s something I don’t do at all.”

We figure he’s had enough of seeing himself in soaps, in guest appearances, in the high-profile products he endorsers.

That may well be, but if he lucks out some more on his no-game-plan game plan, then we will, thankfully, be seeing more of the constantly improving Sam longer than the millisecond he now enjoys.