Parvathy Thiruvothu, National Award-winning actor and founding member of Women in Cinema Collective, has pointed out that the change in portrayal of women on screen has been “very slow” and she’s not happy with that progress. The actor, speaking at the 15th edition of Screen Expresso in Chennai, also underlined how the responsibility of being likeable on screen is only placed on the women, and not as much on the men.
“This bread crumbing of progress doesn’t bode well with me. I’d still take this tokenistic approach of hiring women over nothing. We do need our foot in the door to make some changes. But what we’re missing in terms of representation of our characters, be it a man, woman or any person writing them, are all of us seeing ourselves on screen?” said Parvathy.
She added that the representation exists mostly in templates, from the ‘best friend’ template to the ‘mother’ template to ‘the lover girl’ template, which she’s rather familiar with. “Trust me, I’ve played a lover girl for over a decade before I got the bold feminist roles. The only dramatic lead for that woman in that story is to fall in love. There seems to be nothing else ailing her. There seems to be no worry about her work, family, or health. There seems to be nothing else she’s obsessed with except that man and her love for him,” said the actor.
“Any time we bring in the career or any other aspect she’s interested in, it’s immediately made into an unlikeable woman, not exactly a desirable woman,” she argued. “Why do we need to exist in isolation? I’m a mix of all of this. Of course, I’ve been told I’m extremely dislikeable and intimidating. At a particular time in my life, I used to get hurt being told I’m not a good person. Eventually, I realised that maybe I’m being disliked because you seem to have something that’s being challenged by me being myself. This kind of a character is always put into a bracket,” added Parvathy.
She also asked why the responsibility of being ‘likeable’ on screen isn’t shared by the men. “We can actually hate them, but still be rooting for them. Because that somehow is art, that’s a hero — ‘We know men who are flawed.’ Women are flawed too, beautifully so. But the moment we say that, she’s a negative character, has a grey shade, and is villainized. This cliche or generalisation of us is very belittling, to say the least,” admitted the actor.
Women actors not there to just ‘entertain’
On women always being pitted against women, Parvathy argued, “We know in our own circles that not all women are best friends. I know women who I don’t like, and those who don’t like me. But that’s not because we’re women. That’s because we’ve a certain kind of personality and a value system that we don’t agree with each other.”
She asserted that the role of women actors isn’t limited to just entertaining and titillating the men, and being ‘liked’. “The assumption is people don’t want to watch these kind of women in cinema. But the truth is we’re not here to entertain, we’re living our full lives in their entirety. We get to choose whether we entertain you, but making a caricature out of it is still continuing in the biggest of industries,” she said.
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Parvathy Thiruvothu quoted the example of her 2017 Hindi romantic comedy Qarib Qarib Singlle. In her Hindi film debut directed by Tanuja Chandra, she was cast opposite late actor Irrfan Khan. “Once in a while, comes a movie like Qarib Qarib Singlle, where a woman’s desire is equally platformed as a man’s desire. They both go on a journey to understand that. We can count on our both hands how many kinds of those movies we’ve seen,” she pointed out.
Parvathy Thiruvothu in Qarib Qarib Singlle.
Parvathy is hopeful to be a part of many more such stories. “I hope I get to be a part of production and maybe direction so that I can walk the talk as well. We all love Samantha Ruth Prabhu, who’s become a producer, and in most of her interviews, she says, ‘I need to put money where my mouth is,’” added the actor. Samantha turned producer in 2025 with Subham, which she backed under her new banner Tralala Moving Pictures.
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Parvathy Thiruvothu began her acting career back in 2006 with Vishwanathan’s Malayalam film Out of Syllabus. Over the past two decades, she’s starred in memorable films like Lijo Jose Pellisserry’s 2011 crime thriller City of God, Anjali Menon’s 2014 coming-of-age dramedy Bangalore Days, Mahesh Narayanan’s 2017 crime thriller Take Off, Anjali’s 2018 supernatural drama Koode, Manu Ashokan’s 2019 thriller Uyare, Aashiq Abu’s 2019 medical thriller Virus, and Christo Tomy’s Ullozhukku (2024). She’ll be next seen in Nissam Basheer’s heist action thriller I, Nobody, slated to release in cinemas on July 9.
