The dad wanted to give his baby girl a name that rhymed with her mother Tina’s. He had written the name ‘Lina’ and sent it home, but somehow it was read ‘Lena’. The name stuck. Growing up, Lena found it meant the goddess of light in Greek. And right now, the light in her life is about the brightest it has ever been. Open her Wikipedia page, scroll down to her filmography and the years beginning from 2009 are packed with five or more movies, progressing into ten or more in 2012. What did Lena do, how did Lena do, how does Lena keep doing it, you ask. Luck, she says. And a certain maturity that only real life could bring. Her life, Lena says, is not as packed as the Malayalam movie audience would think it is.
“It would only be a few days for each film. That is the beauty of doing character roles.” But can you blame them for thinking that? Go for Nirnayakam and there she is, a lawyer in the court, watch Ennum Eppozhum and she comes riding her big car to Manju Warrier, in Nee-Na she is the pleasant doc offering friendly advice. You will even see her in Anegan, a Tamil movie, speaking ancient and modern Tamil in her own voice. And now, she tells you she has been shooting for the Hindi film Airlift, playing a Malayali. “At 7.30 am, you will find Akshay Kumar, the hero of the film, ready on the location, makeup on! That sets the standards for the rest of us. I loved that professional attitude.”
Four years ago in a television interview, Lena had said she rarely rejects an offer. But that can’t hold true now. “I started turning down mother roles. I took two — in Vikramadityan and Ennu Ninte Moideen — as a challenge. It shows age variation in a character, from 25 to 50. But it is too strenuous to act older.” It also leads a lot of people to believe Lena is a lot older than she is. “People who meet my old classmates ask them, is Lena only that old?” She was only in class XI when she made her acting debut in Jayaraj’s Sneham. “It is also the screen age. I have been acting for 16 years, and in people’s mind it adds 30 years,” says the post graduate in clinical psychology.
Perhaps psychology had led her to love Vadakunokkiyanthram. The 90s are when most of her favourite films came. A lot has changed since. When Lena came back after a gap, she found in the sets of Big B a whole new atmosphere, where she easily felt comfortable. By then life experiences had brought in her a maturity that helped her as an actor. “It brings life to fictional characters, unlike youngsters who are pampered by parents and bank on the scriptwriters or directors. I was one of them. I can’t even sit through my old movies. I had no sense of time, didn’t know how to catch the light...”
There are other things she learnt, like if you really cry on screen, it makes you look ugly, you only act. She is nothing like the cry-baby characters she did for the television serials that brought her back to cinema after her PG-break. But then there is an aspect of hers in her various characters. “I am like Surpiya Raghavan of Spirit, with a basic need to be upright, cut and dry. I am like Anitha in Left Right Left in being an everyday person, responsible. I do everything myself, I don’t have a manager.”
She had just come to her Thrissur home in an auto rickshaw. Even back in college, after her first few movies, she wanted to just blend, insisting she’d take the KSRTC like her friends. Responsible Lena has taken up a new venture. With two friends — Louisa and Vrinda — she is starting a slimming clinic in Kozhikode, called Aakruti. But for now, she is happy, waiting for the release of Kanyaka Talkies, one of the films that won her a state award in 2013, and terrified, thinking of the dubbing for Moideen.
