Biographie
Edgar Ruben Bagayawa was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Filipino immigrant parents, Ruben and Thelma, who arrived with just $50. He has three younger sisters: Karen, Kimberly, and Stephanie. Raised in the small town of Hespeler, Ontario, he made his acting debut in an elementary school production of Alice in Wonderland, playing a singing pigeon. He attended Galt Collegiate for high school. At his parents' urging, despite being uncertain about his career path, he earned a BA in psychology from Brock University. During summers, he worked for the City of Cambridge Parks and Recreation department, spending Fridays as a garbage collector. After graduating, he joined a large Fortune 500 IT company as a Business Development Manager and quickly became the third highest-grossing salesperson out of over one hundred within three months. While living in Toronto’s entertainment district at Queen and Spadina, he studied improv at Second City. After four years, he took a leave of absence to backpack through Australia and attended Robert McKee’s renowned screenwriting seminar, intending to write about his travels. Upon returning, he relocated to Europe as a Strategic Account Executive. Over the next decade, based in London, he traveled to more than twenty countries, including Iceland, Argentina, Zimbabwe, and Japan, while taking part-time classes at the Central School of Speech and Drama. He became a naturalized British citizen in 2009, then left the corporate sector to enroll in UCLA’s Postgraduate Professional Screenwriting and Producing programs and studied acting at the Ivana Chubbuck Studio in Los Angeles. He is engaged to his long-term partner, Zuzana Neumannova, a pediatric nurse, having proposed to her in 2010 on the Eiffel Tower.
