Pretty girl next door, Navya Nair has offers flooding in. After her success in a whole string of films such as Zhagiya Theeye, Amritham, Maya Kannadi and Sila Nerangalil, she has decided to pick and choose her roles more carefully. However, she is not interested in glamour roles, “The audiences have a certain perspective of every heroine and one should not go against it,” she explains, “I have always stuck to my on-screen image and I have no complaints as I have got some meaty roles coming my way.”
She is now concentrating on roles and explains why she has moved away from Mollywood, the Kerala-based South Indian film industry that made her famous. “I have done about 25 films in Malayalam and won awards for my performances in films like Nandanam and Saira. But today, there are hardly any female-oriented roles in Malayalam films, and if you want to be noticed you have to do films with superstars, where you have only screen time of 15 to 20 minutes. I’ve had enough of it and moved on to Tamil where there are more challenging roles,”
Navya will soon be seen in Cheran’s Autograph 2 and has also signed up for Suresh Joachim’s world-record breaking attempt. Canada-based Suresh is attempting to make a movie from start to finish in just 12 days. This will beat the existing record of 13 days by British director John Gore, who made Fastest Forward in 1990. The movie will start on Dec 8th and be shown on cinema screens on Dec 20th – the whole process monitored by the Guinness Book of Records. But why did Suresh choose Navya as his leading lady? “This project is a big challenge,” he says, “We talked to others and there were people who were scared about doing this project. Navya wasn’t scared and she was interested in doing the project. I select those who love challenges. And she loves challenges.”
Suresh is well-rehearsed in creating world records, having broken records in the past for playing the drums (84 hours continuously – don’t try this at home folks!) and for lighting the largest number of candles – 30,150 – which he did at his second wedding anniversary.