It is somehow a comforting moment when Lalu Alex and Manju Warrier, playing father and daughter in Jo and The Boy, talk about her marriage like it is something she has to do having touched 30 years of age. When the film came out, Manju was 36, not far off her screen age. Still, the scene is comforting because it has for the longest time been the forte of men to keep playing the guy just ripe for marriage decade after decade, while women would have long left the field by 30 or would be cast all too unfairly as mothers and grandmothers of men twice their age. But Manju Warrier, a woman actor in her mid-30s, could walk into Malayalam cinema and find these lead roles of and around her age and pull them off smartly. Apart from a few exceptions like hers, the industry had been unkind to far too many skilled women actors for far too long, that even small breakthroughs appear like moments to rejoice.
Manju Warrier, in the last decade, has not just become a star in her own right but has set a standard for filmmakers and scenarists to take note of. Her success as a lead actor crumbles the age-old theory – concocted no doubt by a grumpy man of zero skills – that people don’t like to see women over 25 on screen, that films which tell stories of older women will simply fail to click.
In recent years, many female actors who disappeared earlier have also begun floating back to films, not just to play the big sister or mother, but to make their presence felt. Meera Jasmine, who had taken a break of six years away from the industry, starred in Sathyan Anthikad’s Makal in 2022. Though this was not a lead role, she didn’t play a character too old for her age and immediately landed a lead role in an upcoming film titled Queen Elizabeth. Navya Nair appeared on screen last year as the lead in Oruthee, 10 years after Scene Onnu Nammude Veedu, her last Malayalam film. Janaki Jaane, another film of hers where she plays the title role released only days ago.
Navya, in a recent interview with The Cue, said that it would be a certain kind of character that came in search of married women, not what they used to be offered before. She also said that it was not the audience who forgot the women actors after marriage, but the film industry which seems to write such women off as ‘settled with families’ and no longer interested in acting. She also admitted to having followed this trodden path, conditioned by years of seeing women leaving films after marriage. But by the time she was aware and attuned to the possibility of acting again, the industry had forgotten her.
Watch: Trailer of Janaki Jaane
Not that there haven’t been comebacks by women before Manju Warrier. Shanthi Krishna’s was a famous one in 1991, opposite Mammootty in Nayam Vyakthamakkunnu, a few years after she left cinema. But then, she was only 27 years old at the time and Mammootty was already 40. Shanthi’s comeback at the time included a string of movies where she played memorable characters and even won two state awards (Savitham, Chakoram), but the same year that she won the state award for best actor, she also played mother to Mohanlal in Pingami. In an interview with TNM, Shanthi spoke about asking directors to give her challenging roles, not the same ‘paavam Amma’ (desolate mother) character every time. In a recent film called Nila, Shanthi played a woman 20 years older than her age, but she was the protagonist nonetheless.
Shwetha Menon is another actor who, though never took a break, got prominent roles in her 30s after a lag of many years. She played noticeable characters in movies like Salt and Pepper, Rathinirvedam (the remake), and Kalimannu. This too was, however, short-lived and the lead roles became fewer over the years.
Watch: Song from Salt and Pepper
Quite a few women actors leading Malayalam cinema today, are in their 30s – Parvathy Thiruvothu, Rima Kallingal, Nithya Menen, and Aishwarya Lekshmi, among others. This sounds like a big deal only because Malayalam cinema has a history of quietly discarding its well-doing women actors in their prime because they hit a certain age. After the black-and-white era which witnessed actors like Sheela, Saradha, and Jayabharathi rule the screen for years, the leading crop of women actors would change every few years, playing their best roles from their teens to early or mid-20s.
Shobhana, one of the most recognised women actors in Indian cinema, began as a 14-year-old playing a mature wife to a policeman (enacted by Balachandra Menon who was at the time over twice her age) in the Malayalam film April 18. She played the biggest role of her career as a 24-year-old in Manichithrathazhu and won the National Award for it. A few years later, the number of roles she played on screen dwindled for no apparent reason, unless you count late 20s as retirement age.
In a Facebook live three years ago, Shobana said that she had felt a certain void when she came to films as a young girl because she could not explore dancing, for which she was trained since she was a child. The roles she was getting were also repetitive, she felt, and she had hopped out to do things she liked. By then — in the early 2000s — she was playing characters with little screen space like in Sradha and Valyettan, which had younger heroines alongside. At the time of the 2009 Mohanlal film Sagar Alias Jacky, Shobana, who was asked if she was playing the heroine, said that the heroine in that film was 20 years old, and Shobana was no longer 20.
Shobana / Courtesy - Instagram / Clicked by @arun_payyadimeethal
The question is not about women playing older characters. Acting by itself negates the need to play your age at all times. This is about how age has stood in the way of skilled actors finding themselves without the opportunities they so truly deserve. Male actors and directors have often been evasive when asked about this. Jagathy Sreekumar, in an old interview, gave an illogical answer about the inaptness of casting such women actors as 17-year-olds. Unfortunately, he was not asked about the logic behind 30-year-old heroes played by 50 or 60-year-old men. He was also not asked if Malayalam films had become so repetitive that every movie told the story of a 17-year-old girl.
It is this unfortunate ‘trend’ that appears to have been shaken in the last decade. Manju Warrier’s 2014 comeback film How Old Are You after a 14-year gap was a test more than a statement. If it had failed, or if her second movie after that did not work, she too might have trodden the same path as her predecessors, fading into oblivion.
Song from How Old Are You
Part of why the trend broke may have to do with the many changes Malayalam cinema witnessed in these years, including unconventional storytelling, and diverse characters making it into scripts and actually finding success in theatres. Though few and far between, new filmmakers and scenarists write characters for older women, and more pointedly, choose to cast actors in the same age bracket to play these roles. A year ago, TNM wrote about the appreciable trend of characters being written for senior actors such as Revathy and Rohini, but the industry as such is still mostly unaccomodating of women past their youth.
Marriages and families also seem to draw a line for women actors, who may not have always chosen to retire by their own will. During the promotion of his film Lalitham Sundaram, Biju Menon was asked if his actor wife Samyuktha Varma would make a comeback like her contemporaries Manju Warrier and Navya Nair. Biju, laughing, said that he knew this question would come, but added that they have a son and Samyuktha has been looking after the boy, so she could not act. Manju Warrier, playing the heroine in the film and present on the occasion, pitched in that she knew it was Samyuktha’s decision to stay away from cinema.
An argument, if you are looking for one, would be about the many female actors who voluntarily stopped acting after getting married at an early age, like Shalini, Annie, and Manju Warrier before her comeback. But it doesn’t stand because those who stayed back despite their marriages went through experiences similar to Urvashi’s or Shobana’s.
Song from Achuvinte Amma
Even the countable comebacks and headways that women in their 30s and beyond have made did not all happen by chance or due to the uncompromising stances of new-age filmmakers. There have been many factors aiding them on the side, like social media visibility enabling women to publish short previews of their talents. Instagram has proved to be a soft launchpad for women who had disappeared from cinema but planned to make their comebacks at a later point. Manju and Navya have active pages on social media. Meera Jasmine recently said in an interview with Rekha Menon about reluctantly getting on Instagram, marking her presence.
Manju Warrier had, in fact, made a step-by-step entry into cinema, first taking the stage for dance performances after years of not appearing in public, and then doing advertisements, before working on a film. Perhaps she was testing the public response and felt more confident about it after every stage. Making an appearance in television shows also helped some actors like Nithya Das, who also actively posts reels with her daughter and earns comments about her screen presence.
Yet another factor is the rise of streaming platforms, allowing content that would otherwise appear unmarketable in the conventional theatre-only scenario – movies without big stars, movies led by characters of differing ages, and movies comfortably headlined by women. The Great Indian Kitchen or Sara’s – one covering in excruciating detail a woman’s work in the house, and the other touching upon the subject of abortion – may have struggled to find release space if they did not directly pop up on OTT platforms.
What gives hope, more than the ‘indulgent’ filmmakers or the OTTs, is the acceptance of the audience of all these women who had once been someone’s favourite star or left behind an archive of unforgettable characters. It needn’t only be comebacks either. A woman in her middle or advanced age can start fresh, given the wide open arms film lovers have proved they are capable of greeting talent with. How else would 71-year-old Viji Venkatesh be able to make her acting debut this year as a sharp woman with a kind heart in Paachuvum Albuthavilakkum and find herself adored for it?