Parvathy Nair plays Kamal Haasan’s son’s girlfriend in Uttama Villain . It’s not a big part, but she is excited. She seems overawed at being part of a “Kamal Haasan film”, and says, “Any role, even a small one, is enough to get you recognition in his films.” The makers of Uttama Villain searched for over four months before picking her for the role. “They had a pretty rigid idea of how the character should look, and luckily for me, the girl they had in mind looked just like me.”
Parvathy plays a vivacious 19-year-old. “There’s childlike happiness and boundless energy in the character I play. I’m confident it will be noticed.” In fact, her role was extended to other scenes she wasn’t initially part of. “I now appear in many scenes that show Kamal’s family.”
Parvathy talks of how Kamal also supervises shoots in the Ramesh Aravind-directed film. “He understands how much each character should emote in a scene. As long as my dialogues conveyed the meaning, it didn’t matter even if I changed words. I loved that liberty.”
Parvathy talks of how Kamal enacted her scenes when they were shooting last year. “It was like being in acting school,” she says.
And the newcomer is learning to be practical. She admits to turning down quite a few offers — “I hail from a conservative family; I made the mistake of turning down a few great roles simply because one or two scenes demanded I dress skimpily.” Now, she doesn’t take her mother to film meetings and makes her own decisions. “I’ve realised it’s important not to have too many rules when you begin your career. As long as they’re not too revealing, I’m now fine wearing glamorous clothes — the role had better be good though.”
