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.

The videos speed through cyberspace on YouTube and other Internet sites, multiply on video discs and hop from one cellphone to the next. “I got mine on a USB stick,” said Michael Tan, chairman of the anthropology department at the University of the Philippines, speaking of the Katrina Halili video.

At a recent international conference on sexual mores in Hanoi, he said, researchers busily shared their data. “One Vietnamese came up to me and gave me copies of a film on a USB stick,” said Michael Tan. “I gave it to an Indian colleague. It’s almost like international solidarity: ‘You might want to study this.”’ In Malaysia, Health Minister Chua Soi Lek, 60, was defiant after he was filmed in a hotel room with a woman who was not his wife. “I am the man in the video,” he said at a news conference, and he denounced political enemies for underhanded tactics. He then resigned from the cabinet, from Parliament and from his executive position in a major political party.

In Indonesia in late 2006, a prominent politician was caught naked with a well-known pop singer in a blurry, one-minute video. The politician, Yahya Zaini, was forced to give up his seat in Parliament and his position as head of religious affairs in the Golkar party. But no place can stage a scandal with the panache of the Philippines, and the country has been consumed with the drama of Katrina Halili and her surgeon friend, Dr. Hayden Kho, 29, who performed liposuction on her before becoming her lover.

“I gave my heart and soul wholly to a man who turned out to be doing his own movie,” Katrina Halili said. “Instead of a doctor, he was a director.”

She was speaking last month at a special hearing of the Philippine Senate, where several members introduced legislation that seemed intended to outlaw immorality.

When Dr. Hayden Kho’s turn came, he was contrite. “This is something I’m very ashamed of,” he said in testimony that was carried live on television, radio and the Internet. “This is a sin.”