She was young, she said. She was innocent. She was blinded by love. And “long after I’m dead, the video will continue to live on in the Internet.”

She is Katrina Halili, 23, a Philippine starlet who was caught on video in a compromising situation with her plastic surgeon, and she is at the centre of a scandal that has transfixed the Philippines. It is the latest in a stream of video scandals that have become a popular form of entertainment in Asia, complete with tears, angry denials, a senate investigation and the spectacle of ruined careers in entertainment and politics.

Katrina Halili joins actresses in Vietnam, celebrities in Hong Kong and government ministers in Malaysia and Indonesia whose public lives have suddenly become defined by something they did in bed. The usual script is a quick and abject apology, like the one delivered two years ago in Vietnam by a 19-year-old actress named Hoang Thuy Linh.

She was the epitome of innocence in her role on a popular soap opera until she shocked viewers in 2007 with a racy home video that found its way onto the Internet. More enterprising than some others, though, Hoang Thuy Linh turned her bad publicity into a career opportunity. She transformed her public image from innocent to sexy and is now much in demand for fashion shows, television appearances and advertising, said Khuat Thu Hong, co-director of the Institute for Social Development Studies in Hanoi. “Her sexiness is quite well exploited,” Khuat Thu Hong said. It is certainly a quick way to get attention, for better or for worse.

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