Raelene Elaine Ebaler Villanía, popularly known as IyaVillania was born on June 29, 1986 at Camperdown, New South Wales Australia. She is a Filipina actress, VJ, host dancer and model. She is credited as one of the visible and prominent personality. She co-hosts television shows like ASAP and Us Girls and is a VJ for MYX Music Channel. She started out by joining numerous auditions and VTR-tests mostly with frustrating results. There was even a time that she was rejected in her MYX audition because of her heavy Australian accent. It was in the year 2003 when she started using her screen name Iya.
Iya’s first television appearance was with IBC 13 in an interactive texting game show Game Channel. While she was busy hosting the show GMA 7 invited her to be part of the cast for its youth oriented program “Click”. GMA included Iya in the network’s drama series called “Walang Hanggan”. She transferred to ABS-CBN in the year 2004 to handle and work for a VJ job by its subsidiary channel MYX. In the same year she was also given an acting role for the youth oriented show “Seasons of Love”. In 2005 another break came for Iya since she was chosen to co-host the noontime show “Wowowee” and the variety show ASAP.
In 2006 she had to give up her hosting job for Wowowee to give way with her two new jobs, Us Girls a lifestyle show which aired on Studio 23 and a reality dance show “U Can Dance”. This continued on until 2007. She also cast in the show Lastikman with Vhong Navarro, Iya was given several television invites to be the guest for TV shows like Komiks, Love Spell and Your song. She was also a guess player for the game show Deal Or No Deal which was then hosted by Kris Aquino and for another game show Wheel Of Fortune. She also hosted a reality dating show Mysmatch in TV 5 in the year 2009 and was a co-host for the morning show “Umagang Kay Ganda”. During that same year she also hosted another reality celebrity game show OMG and appeared in a Korean Telenovela for ABS-CBN Only You. She is currently still with ASAP aired in ABS-CBN, a VJ for MYX and Us Girls in Studio 23.
She also starred in movies like “A Beautiful Life” which was then released in 2004. In 2004 she was nominated for Best supporting Actress in the Manila Film Festival for the movie “AishiteImasu 1941. In 2005 she also appeared in the movie “Exodus: Tales of the Enchanted Kingdom”. She also made her first horror film in 2006 “Pamahiin”. In 2007 she again starred in the romantic- comedy film “ Paano Kita Iibigin”.In 2009 she also was a part of the cast for “when I met You” which was under GMA Films. And was part of the horror movie Shake, Rattle and Roll XI in the same year. Aside from doing movies and television series, Iya also participated and cast in several musical productions like Footloose. She is also a good singer, Iya front-acted for the band Hanson during their concert here in the Philippines. She was also invited to have a duet with Mr. Ogie Alcasid during his Valentine concert in 2005. Her first studio album was released under Viva Records in the year 2008 entitled “Finally”. She is currently part of the cast “Apoy Sa Dagat” airing prime time on ABS-CBN.
