Joseph Estrada, born in 1935, Filipino motion-picture actor and director, later vice president (1992-1998) and president (1998-2001) of the Philippines.

Born in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, Estrada dropped out of college to start a career in films at the age of 21. During his acting career he made more than 120 films, many of them in the action-comedy genre in which he played heroes drawn from the lower levels of society. He won several of the highest Philippine awards for direction and acting.

Estrada’s political career began in 1969, when he was elected mayor of the municipality of San Juan in the Manila metropolitan area. There he devoted himself to tackling crime and served as mayor for 17 years. In 1987 he was elected to the Philippine Senate. Although criticized for inactivity during his period in the Senate, Estrada was among the leading advocates of a termination of the lease on United States military bases in the Philippines. His popularity as an actor

contributed to his convincing win in the vice-presidential election in 1992, even though he was running on a different ticket than that of the winning president, Fidel Ramos.  As vice president, Estrada headed an anticrime commission from 1992 to 1997. In 1998 Estrada won the Philippine presidential elections. In October 2000 he became mired in a corruption scandal, however, and the House of Representatives impeached him in November. The impeachment trial in the Senate was suspended in mid-January 2001 after the prosecution team resigned to protest the suppression of evidence. Thousands of Filipinos staged massive demonstrations in the streets of Manila to demand Estrada’s resignation. Faced with loss of public support, defections of important cabinet members, and transfer of key military support to the political opposition, Estrada was forced from power on January 20. That day, the Supreme Court declared the presidency vacant, effectively ousting Estrada from office, and Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was sworn in as president.