PAULA TAYLOR ON STELLA MAGAZINE
FOR JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2010 ISSUE
PHOTO CREDITS: www.wtalentmanagement.com

An Amazing Shoot with Paula.

It took five months of coordinating, a return trip to Thailand  and eventually Paula’s trip to Manila – to come up with this issue’s cover. Doc Marlon, who was also with us in Thailand and pretty much everyone in the team, had to do an Amazing Race  to Manila to shoot this cover, in Ninyo Fusion Cuisine in Katipunan, immediately before Paula left the country. During the shoot, we all discovered that Paula Taylor is an absolute sweetheart. She spoke in a cute British droll and likes to say please and thanks, even under duress. As she was flying back to Thailand immediately after filming, she turned up in her jeans, shirt, beloved Chanel flats, and a great big Thai smile.

ONE BIG ADVENTURE

Paula Taylor’s life is just that – plus a few lucky detours and a firm resolve to follow her heart.

The call of the dream is irresistible, but it actually takes a lot of guts to leave everything behind to follow that inner voice to the ends of the world, if need to be. A monumental decision, to be sure, to shake up one’s life in pursuit of a mere possibility. But take your pointers from Paula Taylor, who has done just that- crossed to the edge of the world  and back.

Paula first caught the eye of Filipino audiences in the reality show “The Amazing Race Asia II” as one half of an unlikely but formidable team. Unlikely, only because the lively, unassuming girl who, with close friend Natasha Monk, quite literally gave fellow contestants a run for their money, was then already one of the most famous personalities in Thai show-business, with more magazine covers, TV ads, movies and product endorsements to her name than there were pit stops in the game. Wherever in the world the race took her, no one would suspect that half-English, half-Thai Paula could not walk down a street in her adopted home, Bangkok, without getting mobbed.

She shrugs off the notion of being too famous. “I do get recognized a lot, but that doesn’t affect me much. I believe in keeping my personal life private,” she says.

But long before the race or the fame, Paula was already a seasoned adventurer, having lived out of her suitcase  all over Asia since she was a teen. Having grown up in Australia, she was scouted at age 12 whilst on vacation in Thailand. She landed one modelling  job after another, working during school breaks and going full blast after finishing high school. Modelling across Asia was supposed to be a temporary engagement before entering university in Australia, as a business major. But in 2003, the romantic comedy “Sexphone and the Girl Next Door” catapulted her into Thai viewers’ hearts. Since then, she has never looked back.

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