Anaswara Rajan’s smile is worth a million bucks, the actor’s face breaks into that smile when I congratulate her on the third release of the year (it is only the second week of February yet!) and the tremendous success of Rekhachitram. “The releases just happened one after the other. These were the films that I worked on last year…it just happened that way,” she says. We are, of course, talking about Painkili,her film after Rekhachitram and Ennu Swantham Punyalan.
With perfect hair, which the stylist touches up, dressed in a black silk shirt with red flowers and black trousers, Anaswara looks every bit the film star.
Anaswara calls her role in Painkili, the closest to how she is as a person — “slightly weird, ebullient and I can be very funny. The meter of all the characters is high, it is like everyone is on something high-inducing. Everything is over the top! It was a lot of fun,” says the 22 year old. It might remind you of the kind of films we would have watched before, “but told in a new way.”
Anaswara Rajan in ‘Painkili’
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Sreejith Babu, the director, did not restrict the actors in any way, she adds. Though the film has met with mixed reviews, Anaswara impresses as the excitable, prone-to-impulsiveness Shiba Baby. Shiba is the kind of character she had been wanting to play, “it [the character] is free, I can do whatever I want]. It is a bit like myself… I have never played a character like myself.”
The actor made her debut in the 2017 film Udaharanam Sujatha, as Athira Krishna, the teenage daughter of a domestic worker Sujatha (Manju Warrier). She was in Class VIII at the time.
Calling herself an accidental actor, Anaswara says that acting was a distant dream for her. “I am from a village in Kannur. Acting and cinema were another world for me,” she says. However she was into street plays and mono acting while in school. When a friend told her about an audition call for Udaharanam Sujatha, she attended it and got the role. She made an impression as the petulant teenager who resents her mother studying in the same class as her in the Malayalam remake of the Hindi film Nil Battey Sannata.
After the film was done, she was back at home, in Kannur, back to school until a couple of years later when Thanneermathan Dinangal happened. As Keerthy, the ‘crush’ of 11the grader Jaison (Mathew Thomas), in the Gireesh AD film, she won many young hearts in Kerala. She went to act in Gireesh’s next, Super Sharanya, which was another praiseworthy performance. Following that, she did films such as Vaanku, Vishudha Mejo, Pranaya Vilasam, Thugs including a couple of Tamil and a Hindi film too … but her breakout role and film was yet to be.
Ananswara Rajan in ‘Neru’
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That was Sara Mohammed of the 2023 film Neru, directed by Jeethu Joseph. As the blind, rape survivor Anaswara made an impact with her portrayal. It was not an easy role, but she made it look effortless. Her co-actors on the film were Mohanlal, Jagadish, Priyamani, and Siddique… She matched their performance scene for scene. With that film she proved her acting chops. Then came the other films such as Abraham Ozler, with Jayaram, Arjun Ashokan, and Guruvayoor Ambalanadayil, with Basil Joseph and Prithviraj.
She started 2025 with Rekhachitram.
Anaswara was excited that the film came to her, more so that the director Jofin T Chacko thought of casting her as Rekha, the titular character, “I loved becoming Rekha. I was excited that it came to me, more so when people tell me that the character stays in their hearts and minds.”
Industry watchers call her Kerala’s newest ‘crush’ or sweetheart like Manju Warrier and Nazriya Nazim. I ask her what she thinks of it and she smiles, “I am flattered!”
In ‘Super Sharanya’
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With that comes the attention. Is it hard being a celebrity, especially for someone this young?
“It is not hard now, but it used to be. Initially I did not know how to handle the attention and the fame. I was excited that I got into films, that I was getting the attention. However when I experienced the negative aspect of it, with me being labelled as a ‘stuck-up’ person, it was not nice. However, now I am fine. I have come to enjoy it. I love being an actor and being in films; I love it when people recognise me and come to me.”
Anaswara is smart enough to not dismiss the media, especially the paparazzi. “We need everybody. They help promote our films, and give films wider publicity.” She agrees that being photographed while out on personal work is not okay but she is ‘used to it’. “The one thing that makes me uncomfortable is when they click their photographs from weird angles.”
With Asif Ali and Manoj K Jayan in ‘Rekhachitram’
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SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
While on roles and being recognised for them, what is one kind of role that she would like to explore? “I want to play a negative character because I have never. Athira of Udaharanam Sujatha character had negative shades, but it is not wholly that.”
As someone who is becoming Kerala’s sweetheart? She pauses and adds laughing, “In the distant future. I don’t want to ruin my image now.”
Her kitty is full — apart from a couple of Malayalam films, she has one Telugu and one in Tamil too. While the Telugu movie is yet to be named, the Tamil one is Selvaraghavan’s 7G Rainbow Colony 2.
Since the Malayalam industry has seen actors move to Tamil and Telugu industries — Aishwarya Lekshmi, Keerthy Suresh, Nivetha Thomas, Anupama Parameswaran — it seems like a tempting option. “I want to make films in every language. But I can never say bye to our industry. I am proud to be from this industry, a senior actor from Tamil told me how I must be proud to belong to the Malayalam film industry. Even if the industry says bye to me I’ll try my best to be here.”
Published – February 21, 2025 01:02 pm IST
