Lea Salonga’s Hollywood Walk of Fame Star Reopens an Old Question: Why Doesn’t Dolphy Have a National Artist Title Yet?

On September 4, Lea Salonga will kneel outside the Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard and press her hands into wet concrete for the Hollywood Walk of Fame’s 2,855th star — the first ever awarded to a Filipina. The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce placed her in the Live Theatre/Live Performance category of its Class of 2026, alongside comedian Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias. Two days later, at the Beverly Hilton, the Manila International Film Festival (MIFF) — a Los Angeles-based festival focused on Filipino film — will give her its Icon Award, recognizing four decades of work across theater, film, television, and music.

Both honors are American, landing roughly 12,000 kilometers from the country that keeps asking, every time Salonga’s name resurfaces internationally, why she still isn’t a National Artist. Ask Salonga herself, though, and she’s already pointed the question somewhere else.

Lea Salonga press photo for her Hollywood Walk of Fame announcement — Lea Salonga will receive her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on September 4, becoming the first Filipina honored on the landmark. — Press Photo

What She’s Actually Said

The Order of National Artists is the highest cultural honor the Philippine government confers, created under a 1972 presidential proclamation and administered jointly by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Cultural Center of the Philippines, which evaluate nominees before the President formally confers the title. Salonga’s name has come up for it more than once — after her Walk of Fame selection was first announced last year, and before that at the 2024 Gawad CCP Para sa Sining awards, where the Cultural Center itself honored her theater work. Asked directly, at both events, whether she wanted the title, she pointed elsewhere both times. Most recently, she told the press it would be “absolutely wrong if I got it before Dolphy” — Rodolfo “Dolphy” Quizon Sr., the late Filipino comedian known across generations as the “Comedy King” of Philippine cinema, who died in 2012 without ever receiving the honor, despite a six-decade career spanning more than 200 films.

Where Dolphy’s Case Actually Stands

Manila 3rd District Representative Joel Chua filed House Resolution 41 in July 2025, asking the NCCA to formally take up Dolphy’s nomination, calling it “a fitting tribute for the actor.” The resolution hasn’t produced a conferment. The NCCA’s vetting process is confidential and runs on its own multi-year timeline rather than a resolution’s momentum, so there’s no public record of why a name clears or doesn’t — and no confirmed date for when the next class of National Artists even gets announced. The most recent batch, which included the late actress Nora Aunor for Film and Broadcast Arts, dates back to 2022.

Where Salonga’s own case would land in that process isn’t as settled as it might sound. Her career runs mostly through music and theater, which puts her in the company of a shorter, less household-name roster — Rolando Tinio, Daisy Hontiveros Avellana, Severino Montano — recognized under the Theater and Music categories. But her screen work, from Sana Maulit Muli to the singing voices behind two Disney princesses, means Film and Broadcast Arts isn’t obviously closed to her either. The category question would be the committee’s to sort out, not a disqualifier on its own.

Photo of Filipino comedian Dolphy, known as the Comedy King of Philippine cinema — Salonga has said more than once that she believes Dolphy, the late “Comedy King” of Philippine cinema, deserves the National Artist title before she does.

Photo of a young Dolphy early in his decades-long career in Philippine film and comedy — Salonga has said more than once that she believes Dolphy, the late “Comedy King” of Philippine cinema, deserves the National Artist title before she does.

What She Actually Did to Get Here

She was 18 when she was cast as Kim in the 1989 West End premiere of Miss Saigon, a role that won her the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Musical before she’d even taken it to Broadway. When she brought Kim to New York in 1991, she became the first Asian actress to win a competitive acting Tony, and remains, to date, the only one to win Best Leading Actress in a Musical specifically — the second Asian actress to win any competitive acting Tony was Ruthie Ann Miles, in the Featured Actress category, for The King and I in 2015. Salonga went on to become the first Asian actress to play both Éponine and Fantine in the Broadway run of Les Misérables, sang the singing voice of Princess Jasmine in Aladdin and of the title character in Mulan, and was named a Disney Legend in 2011. Her own official biography puts her count of dignitaries performed for at six Philippine presidents and four American ones.

None of that changes what September actually settles. Hollywood didn’t need anyone else’s paperwork to clear first — it has room for Lea Salonga on a stretch of sidewalk that already carries Barbra Streisand and Julie Andrews. What the Philippines decides, on its own slower process, is a separate question — and Salonga has made clear where she thinks the line should start.