In the undulating flow of words that come from KPAC Leela, it seems possible to time travel for a little while, from the chaotic 2020s to the sweet lull of the 1950s. Age has withered the disappointments of her youth, when she wanted to be dancer but ended up in a theatre group, when she had to leave behind the stage she loved for the family she created, when she had to let go of opportunities without even knowing they had come to her.
Leela, in this late stage of her life, is unexpectedly in the limelight again, as an actor on the screen, rediscovered for her distinct depictions in Malayalam cinema. Roudram 2018, Pookkaalam, Granny, and Bhoothayanam, among several other films of the last decade, have given Leela a warm welcome back to the world of acting she’d once left behind.
That this is a veteran who had once received appreciation from India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru makes her comeback especially prized.
Serendipity brought her before the camera after a long gap when director Jayaraj cast her for his Roudram 2018, a drama set in the real-life floods of that year. She won Special Mention for her role of Marykutty at the Kerala State Film Awards 2019.
“He found me at an event to celebrate Lalitha’s (late actor KPAC Lalitha) 50 years of acting. Lalitha and I were very close when we both were in theatre. She said at the event that it should have been I who stood in her place if I had not left the stage so early. That was the kind of recognition I had once enjoyed,” Leela tells TNM in an interview.
Her voice has the resignation of one who has seen it all, and the curiosity of the 14-year-old that she was when she first entered a stage. Back then, it was not a happy choice. Little Leela had only wanted to dance.
“I picked it up from movies that we used to watch in Piravom, which was where we had our nearest film theatre. We’d walk back to my village called Pampakuda in Muvattupuzha. Back home, I would sing and dance to the songs from the films, like ‘Anathalayolam Venna Tharam’ (Jeevitha Nouka), and seeing that, my father sent me to learn classical dance in Kozhikode,” she recalls.
From there, she would go to Kalamandalam and learn Mohiniyattam and Bharatanatyam, until an actor called Beatrice spotted her and recommended her to the Kerala People’s Arts Club (KPAC), the leftist theatre movement that furthered Communism in Kerala.
Leela’s father was a Communist, and not much favoured for it by members of the family. Leela’s own foray into acting-- a choice considered unfitting for young girls of the time-- further increased their bitterness. But her father cared little for their resentment and took her to act in PJ Antony’s Munthiricharil Kure Kanal. Leela hated it; she only wanted to dance. The scolding from Antony for her dancer’s expressions also did not help.
“I cried a lot, but in those days you did not exactly tell your father what you liked and did not like to do; it was a different time,” she says.
Teenager Leela had a change of heart when she acted in Puthiya Akasham Puthiya Bhoomi, a drama by renowned playwright and director Thoppil Bhasi. She found herself being written about in newspapers as the promising young talent to look forward to. She also liked it that her character would dance on stage. The praises reached a peak when KPAC toured Delhi, and Prime Minister Nehru told Leela that her performance was “very nice, beautiful.”
She got busy. Iconic KPAC plays like Thulabharam, Koottukudumbam and Mooladhanam featured Leela. “Some days there would be two or three different plays on a single day,” she recalls fondly, her passionate words putting in your head a picture of the crowded shows and the film actors who came to watch.
Those were times when theatre was the more frequented source of entertainment and the actors on stage were revered. Sathyan, one of the most renowned actors of early Malayalam cinema, would sit on the front row and raise his thumbs to Leela, in appreciation of her performance. Sheela and Sarada would come backstage and talk to her.
It was her performance as the hapless mother giving poison to her children in Thulabharam that won Leela the most appreciation, she remembers. “There would be women in the audience who shout not to do it, that they would raise the children. The emotion carried across that deeply,” she says.
As it happened, when one of the plays was adapted to cinema, Leela went along with it. Mudiyanaya Puthran (1961) introduced her in films, but it was in Puthiya Akasham Puthiya Bhoomi (1962) that she had a noticeable performance, the three dances she got to perform being the most memorable for Leela.
Ammaye Kaanan (1963), Adhyapika (1968) and other films followed, but not too many. Without a direct phone to reach her, she did not come to know about offers which were rejected by the office of the KPAC. “There weren't many actors who could dance too, and the KPAC did not want everyone leaving for films. I did not know about these offers until Sathyan asked me one day why I rejected a certain role that included a dance performance. But I did not mind so much, because I was so busy with the dramas, with multiple shows a day,” Leela says.
Marriage and children and new responsibilities would, however, put a long pause to a passion she held so dear. She does not spell it out, but when she says an actor would always want to act, the sense of loss seems deep. However, Leela admits that she has always regretted not becoming a professional dancer, although she managed to find a stage sometimes when she’d dance for an audience in other parts of India before a play began.
Back then, she had not enjoyed playing characters with negative shades. But in her comeback, she has had an unusual string of characters.
In 2023, she played one of her most recognised characters in Pookkaalam, as a woman in her 90s who falls under suspicion as her husband (Vijayaraghavan) discovers a 50-year-old love letter that came to her. More films like Divorce (2023), Lovely (2025) and Poovu (2024) followed.
This year, she has appeared in back-to-back horror films, playing two scary characters in titles of similar names - Granny, a short film by Anantharaman Ajay, and Muthassi, a web series by Nandulal MS.
“I am working in another film now, with a flavour of horror in it, called Visitor, alongside Urvashi and Navya Nair and others. Now I keep getting offers for horror films,” she says with her familiar laugh, that echoed in Granny, and in Eko (2025), a film that she gave voice to, for the main character of a Malaysian immigrant.
She prefers, she says in that matter-of-fact way of hers, family dramas. But acting is what is important to her, and she does not plan to put another pause to her passion for as long as she can.