It’s after many years of saying ‘No!’ that Nithya has finally found joy in saying ‘Yes!’ Since her accidental entry to acting (she wanted to become a cinematographer), she had, for a long time, been ‘super bored’, going through the process with ‘apathy’. But the last six or seven months have been different, she says. “I’ve become a bit more liberal and I’m enjoying the whole process. I’m feeling a lot of love from within, and this is reflecting in my work too.”
It wasn’t a particular film or scene that brought about this transformation. “It was something else… something more internal.” Although she admits her character Ganga in Kanchana-2 “started the shift”. “When people, who you never come across in day-to-day life, come to you saying neenga romba nalla panni irukkinga ma , explaining how my character had touched them, you can’t help but feel you can make a difference.”
But her apathy did come with a silver lining. “Because I wasn’t interested, I wasn’t desperate. Had acting not taken off, I would’ve been glad to become a teacher. So, my judgement was never clouded.”
Not that Nithya’s choices were ever driven by terms like “career”, “strategy”, and “market value”. “Isn’t that a sad way to approach life?” she asks. “Your heart and your instincts are far more reliable than your brain. When you follow your heart, you can be sure you won’t regret it later. Even if you calculate your every move, it’s not like life ever goes according to plan.”
Which is why she doesn’t need more than the camaraderie she shares with a director or the positive energy she absorbs from a crew to sign a film. So, when she was approached to act in Suriya’s time-travel fantasy 24 , she says she would never have said no to Vikram, the film’s director. “I’m extremely fond of him and he’s always got a 100 stories he wants to narrate, each better than the last. Why would I pass on that comfort level and fun?”
The upcoming Vikram-starrer Iru Mugan , though, appealed to her more cerebrally. “You have no clue how rare it is for a heroine to get a chance to play a character with intelligence… someone with personality, that too, outside the ambit of romance.”
Intelligent with a lot of personality, it’s a role she fit into like a glove. After all, it’s not every day that you come across an actress who can speak six languages. “I used to be able to speak Marathi too. So I guess I was quite smart as a kid. Which is why my parents felt I’d become a doctor someday.”
So, when this idealist, who believed in “speaking the truth” and “bringing it out”, said she wanted to become a journalist, her parents weren’t surprised. “I realised journalism was not the right place to follow my idealistic pursuits… I gravitated towards cinema. Even though my family was accepting of an unusual career, cinema, my journey in it has still been a tough one.”
That worry didn’t come without reason. She feels acting tends to be a crash course in life’s toughest lessons.
“The second you’ve become an actress, people take the licence to make many assumptions about you. You’re in trouble if you interact with a director/actor. You’re in even more trouble if you don’t. When I started out, a single YouTube comment would make me sad for days and I’d wonder how people could say such nasty things about me.”
But it also teaches one to become “resilient, philosophical and ultimately spiritual”.
“You learn to smile at those comments and move on. I realised I was above all that. That’s when you see that cinema is something altogether new. It’s where I’ve made my friends, forged my bonds and follow my passion. It’s like falling in love after that.”
