Lea Salonga got on her knees.

That’s how the Filipino Broadway and Disney icon reacted when her star was unveiled on Hollywood Boulevard on September 4 (September 5 in the Philippines) — dropping down to touch her own name on the sidewalk while the crowd around her chanted. “Oh my God!! It’s real!!” she said. Then came the line that framed the whole day, a callback to years spent walking Hollywood Boulevard as a fan before any of this: “I’ve stepped on a lot of famous people. And now, people get to step on me — which feels strangely appropriate for show business. I love a full circle moment.” It was the moment that made her the first Filipina in history to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the stretch of sidewalk along Hollywood Boulevard where the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, the organization that runs the honor, embeds a name for every entertainer it recognizes.

ElysPlanet first covered this back in August, when the Hollywood Chamber confirmed Salonga’s inclusion in its Walk of Fame Class of 2026. What happened this week is the part that was still theoretical then: an actual ceremony, in front of an actual crowd, with Salonga’s peers standing up one by one to explain what she means to them.

The Star Itself

Salonga’s star — the 2,855th ever installed on the Walk of Fame — sits in the Live Theatre/Live Performance category, embedded at 6225 Hollywood Boulevard directly in front of the Pantages Theatre, one of Hollywood’s oldest and most storied live-performance venues. The ceremony was hosted by Sibley Scoles, an Emmy Award-winning sports and entertainment journalist, with Ming-Na Wen — Salonga’s Mulan co-star, who played the character on screen while Salonga provided her singing voice — serving as guest speaker.

Salonga was nominated for the honor by the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF), an annual Los Angeles-based festival now in its third year that showcases Filipino cinema to American audiences. That connection isn’t incidental: two days after this ceremony, on September 6, Salonga returns to a MIFF stage to accept the festival’s Icon Award at its Closing Night Gala — the same event where the late Filipino film icon Nora Aunor and the late singer Pilita Corrales are being honored posthumously, accepted by their granddaughter Janine Gutierrez.

What Her Friends Said About Her

The guest list read like a reunion of people whose careers had crossed hers at some point. Brandy — who played a version of Cinderella opposite fellow Filipino-American actor Paolo Montalban, and recently performed “A Whole New World” alongside Salonga at Disney’s D23 Expo — delivered one of the ceremony’s most quoted lines: “Lea Salonga’s voice has never been only a voice. It has been a doorway, a mirror, a home. There are singers who reach notes. Lea reaches hearts and souls.” She added, “This star is more than recognition. It is evidence that where you begin can never limit how far your gift can travel.”

Actor Darren Criss, dressed in a barong for the occasion, called Salonga “royalty” in Disney, Broadway, and the Philippines — “the three things that raised him,” as he put it. The moment carried its own footnote: Criss became the first male actor of Filipino descent to win a Tony Award in 2025, thirty-four years after Salonga’s own historic 1991 Tony win for Miss Saigon made her the first Asian woman to win Best Actress in a Musical. Ming-Na Wen, true to her Mulan connection, worked in a run of Disney puns before landing on a straightforward tribute: “You sing with such honesty and give every song your whole soul.” Singer H.E.R. was also among those who came out for the ceremony.

What She Said About Herself

Salonga’s own remarks traced the full arc — a seven-year-old in a Manila production of The King and I with local theater company Repertory Philippines, then Kim in the West End and Broadway productions of Miss Saigon, the role that made her a Tony winner before she’d even turned 20. “I was a little girl in the Philippines who loved to sing and perform,” she said. “I certainly didn’t have some grand plan for how any of this was supposed to unfold. I just knew that I loved doing it. This career has taken me to places I never imagined I would go.”

She also thanked her mother, Ligaya, who managed her early career, and her brother Gerard, who used to sing duets with her — joking that she wished the star were big enough to fit their names, and her son Nic’s, alongside her own.

But it was her closing line that turned a personal milestone into something bigger for the people watching from home: “I hope that someday a young Filipino kid comes to Hollywood, sees my name, and thinks, ‘Oh, maybe I can get here too.'”

Why It Matters

The Philippines has produced global stars before — Bruno Mars and Apl.de.Ap, of the Black Eyed Peas, both carry Filipino heritage and both have Walk of Fame stars of their own. What makes Salonga’s different is that she’s the first one who is fully, unambiguously Filipino — born in Manila, raised in local theater, an artist whose entire career started on Philippine soil before it went anywhere else.

She isn’t done yet, either. Two days from now, at the Beverly Hilton, Salonga picks up MIFF’s Icon Award. And later this month, she takes on a very different kind of role — voicing the lead villain in DreamWorks Animation’s Forgotten Island, the studio’s first Filipino-themed film, which also happens to be why H.E.R. was in the crowd this week. It adds up to a stretch that started on a Hollywood sidewalk and keeps going: a girl from Manila who made it, and made room for the ones coming after her.