Former Miss Karnataka Parvati Nair loved studies. The Tamil superhit film The Greatest of All Time (GOAT) actor topped her batch at the Manipal Institute of Technology. So, how did she find her footing in movies? “I always wanted to be a fashion designer and loved to paint. While I did some theatre, my English teacher in school told me that I was a good actor and should aim for Bollywood.” At that time, Nair did not think much of it. However, her teacher’s words somehow remained stuck in her head.
Nair did a television show during her Class X summer break. After she joined her engineering course, she had the opportunity to do a short film made by the Manipal Institute of Communication (MIC). The film was showcased at many film festivals.
“I really enjoyed working on that project, but my parents were not keen on me pursuing a career in the film industry. I, however, did a few advertisements. My first Malayalam film, Poppins was an anthology that needed me to shoot for a few hours.”
In 2012, she also did Yakshi: Faithfully Yours, a Malayalam romantic fantasy film that had a theatrical release in a few halls, and was also dubbed in Hindi. It made its way to television channels as well. “I also did a coming-of-age film Nee Ko Njaa Cha in Malayalam.”
Even though Nair rejected many successful films initially, she admits that there was never a dearth of offers that saw her do films like Story Kathe, Ninayathe, Koditta Idangalai Nirappuga, Enkitta Mothathe, Overtake, Nimir, 83, Dhoomam, and Super Zindagi, among others.
“Only mainstream movies make you a commercial star. With time, there was a lot of convincing that happened, and my elder brother also spoke to my parents to let me pursue a career in the movie industry.”
Admitting that the film industry has changed over the last decade, especially for women, Nair says, “Senior actresses were retiring when I started as they were not finding roles after getting married. Now, the trend has quite changed.” For someone who prefers a narration of a script over reading it, she says that scenes are best understood from the perspective of the director. “