Born in the Isle of Man, raised in Liverpool, turning heads in India… Amy Jackson always knew a film like I would take a long time to shoot. She knew she wouldn’t be permitted to act in other films, and for a person who likes to be on the go at all times, she knew it would be quite trying to be stuck in one place for two years. However, that wasn’t stopping her from working with a ‘director of Shankar’s stature’. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You don’t say no to a Shankar film,” she says, adding, “He moulds actors to get exactly what he wants. I can confidently say that I lived my role.” Amy likes to do something different in each film, and in I , she plays Diya, a Tamil girl, “a role I’ve never played before.”
details and she says, “My role, just like Vikram’s, has a good growth arc,” she says. In fact, Lingesan (Vikram’s character) is strongly motivated by Diya.” Amy has done two Tamil films so far ( Madrasapattinam and Thaandavam ) and believes her experiences in Chennai over the last four years have helped her relate to Diya. “There are some scenes where I wear traditional clothes and have flowers in my hair just like Tamil girls.”
Though she claims to find Tamil easier by the day, she acts out each scene by taking it in English first. “I use this method to bring emotion into my performance. I recite my lines in English first, and then switch back to the original lines when shooting begins. There are a lot of ‘big lines’ in this film and I have taken great effort to understand what each word means before I say it.”
Her live dance with Vikram at I ’s audio launch for ‘Ennodu Nee Irundhaal’ has been much talked about. She surprises us with the information that she was able to rehearse for it only a day before the event. She enjoyed performing in front of thousands of cinema-crazy fans. “I’ve been around in India for a while now; such a reception isn’t altogether new!” she says. “However, it was still quite something to perform in front of Rajinikanth and Arnold Schwarzenegger.” Is she headed back to the UK soon? “Well, I’m living out of my suitcase at the moment, even though Mumbai is my base in India,” she says. “Thanks to having my dad travel with me, I don’t feel quite cut off from my family.” As we wind up the interview, she asks if we can hear the song playing in the background. “It’s ‘Ladio’, a full-on dance number with complicated routines, from I . I’m at the rehearsal now, and we are shooting in Chennai. It’s all quite exciting,” Indeed Amy, and more exciting times lie ahead.
