K aanamullal… , the melodious lines of a song from her film Salt N' Pepper, keep you entertained as you wait for film actor Mythili to take her call. A breathless hello is followed by an explanation that she had been practising the flamenco for a stage show.
Flamenco or waltz, the young actor seems to be in step with the current scenario in Mollywood where experimentalism is the name of the game. She tells you happily that she has maintained the hit number from Salt N' Pepper as the caller tone on her phone as she feels that her current high in tinsel town is due to the remarkable success of Salt N' Pepper , the movie that whetted the appetite of audiences who were hungry for different themes and narratives in Malayalam cinema.
She has been seen in an interesting variety of roles and acted with practically all the top heroes in Malayalam cinema such as Mammootty, Mohanlal, Jayaram and Dileep. On Saturday, she will be seen in the company of Dileep in Mayamohini , in which he is in drag almost all through the movie.
“ Mayamohini is a complete entertainer. We are trying not to reveal the suspense in the film. I play a police officer's daughter called Sangeeta who is quite a handful. My father, played by ‘Spadikam' George, is on suspension and he is trying hard to get back his job….Acting with Dileep ettan was a blast,” she laughs.
Next up is Nadodimannan , again with Dileep. Talking about her roller-coaster ride in Mollywood she says: “ Salt N' Pepper was a turning point for me. I knew the movie would do well but I never imagined it would be such a hit,” she admits.
Recently, she again hit the big time in Arun Aravind's Ee Adutha Kalathu , in which she played a deglamourised character called Remani, a young wife and mother from an impoverished background.
Her own voice
Moreover, for the very first time, she dubbed for her character. “I must thank Arun ettan , director of the film, and Murali ettan , scenarist of the film, for reposing confidence in me. I did not want to dub for this character at all. I felt in my bones that this flick would be a huge hit and so I did not want to spoil the film with my dubbing. But they encouraged me to do it and I can't tell you how thrilled I am,” she admits. Ee Adathu Kalathu
Both Arun and Murali, she adds, gave her a detailed description of her character and explained how she would have to change her body language to enact this bold woman.
“She is totally different from Manikyam, my debut role in Ranjith sir's Paleri Manikyam: Oru Pathirakolapathakathinte Katha. Although both of them are from an economically disadvantaged background, Remani is a hardened city woman who struggles to make ends meet. There is no innocence in her, unlike Manikyam,” says Mythili.
Njanum Ente Familyum did not work wonders at the box office, but Mythili says she enjoyed enacting her character, Sophie. The actor has travelled a great deal since her first role in the period film Paleri… to the cosmopolitan Meenakshi in Salt N Pepper and the world-weary Remani. She says she counts herself lucky to have got a break in a film directed by someone like Ranjith. “In fact, he even gave me my name Mythili. Actually, my name is Brighty Balachandran,” she says.
What next? The girl from Konni, Pathanamthitta, who had once dreamt of becoming an airhostess, now hopes that Kollywood is not too far away.
