Malini Fonseka - 40 years of stardom

2003/04/26/ - Daily Mirror

Forty years is a long time in any career. In acting, where looks matter more than in most careers, it is a very long time indeed - especially for an actress, as stardom tends to be flighty and is usually degraded by the passage of time.

This month, Malini Fonseka celebrates her fortieth year as an actress. Her latest film, Wekanda Walawwa by Lester James Pieris, is about to be released. She is no longer the shapely, stunningly beautiful nymph who so effortlessly dominated the Sinhala screen throughout the 1970s and the 1980s. Now portly, she nevertheless remains Malini Fonseka - there is something essentially timeless about that face.

It was never sultry. Malini was never a sex symbol. Actually, few of our leading actresses have been 'sexy' in the Western sense (Sandhya Kumari of the preceding generation perhaps being the exception). Malini was prettier than most, but still remained essentially schoolgirlish well into her acting career. (I'm not talking about the lack of nudity in our pre-1990s cinema. A film actress who needs to strip to look sexy had better look for another career. Malini never had a nude scene in films and still managed to make people hold their breath).

The closest that Malini got to being nude in films was to bathe wrapped in a cloth. I remember that a papier mache model of her wrapped in a bathing cloth was placed on a cinema billboard at Maradana junction in the mid-1980s. It led to an increase of traffic accidents and was removed while the film was still running.

The voice perfectly matched the face. Slightly nasal, it evoked desire without spelling it out, merely hinting at it. It could also be very soothing on the nerves. To say that she could do little with both in many of her film roles, which were commercially typecast, is actually paying a compliment, for people never got tired of even the stereotype performances. Hers wasn't a face which launched a thousand ships - it takes more than mere beauty to do that, and Malini's face has always had a certain guilelessness about it. But it certainly sold thousands of tickets purely on the basis of its dazzling smile.

Few though they may have been, the mature roles where she could display her abundant talent were fortunately there. In all, she has won 26 awards for her acting. The first of these was in 1972, when she won the critics award for best actress for Lester James Pieris' "Nidhanaya" - easily her most memorable performance, as the demure young wife of a man who sees in her nothing more than a sacrificial victim. (But others will place her performances in the Pathiraja films 'Bambaru Ewith' and 'Soldadu Unnehe' equally highly.

'Nidhanaya' was her 14th film. The next award came in 1978 for her 59th - "Bambaru Ewith" by Dharmasena Pathiraja. That performance won her the President's Award for best actress. Malini won the same award again the following year for "Wasanthaye Dawasak" by T. Arjuna. This was followed by K. A. W. Perera's "Hingana Kolla."

Then came a series of OCIC awards - Vijaya Dharmashri's 'Dandu Monara' (1980), 'Beddegama' (Lester James Pieris), 'Soldadu Unnehe' (Dharmasena Pathiraja), 'Induta Mal Mitak' (Sugathapala Senarath Yapa) and 'Aradhana' (Vijaya Dharmashri) which in 1982 won for Malini two awards for Best Actress (President's as well as the popular Sarasaviya award). This impressive list is capped by two international awards, won at New Delhi and Moscow.

Few remember now that Malini made her acting debut in the Sinhala theatre 38 years ago. Malini Senehelatha Fonseka, a student of Gurukula Vidyalaya, Kelaniya, first acted in a stage play in 1963. In 1965, she played the female lead in "Akal Wessa" and won the best actress award for that year. By 1967, she had acted in 14 plays.

Her debut screen role was in Tissa Liyanasuriya's "Punchi Baba" (alongside Joe Abeywickrema and Anthony C. Perera) in 1967. Her first break with Lester came in 1970 with "Akkara Paha." Malini went on to make 142 films in thirty five years.

Through the 1990s, she shifted to the teledrama format, directing 10 and acting in 16. She has won three awards for her teledrama performances.

In retrospect, many of these roles cast her as a rural woman, not a sophisticated urban type. This coyness didn't quite leave her even when she took to wearing slacks and sunglasses while romping through gardens and beaches in the commercial cinema. Malini always looked like the village girl which is probably why she had such a tremendous following.

Things may have changed by now, but that coyness amounted to the average male fantasy in this country regarding the ideal woman - (shy, beautiful, submissive, with a hint of naivete thrown in). Few would have realised that fantasy outside a cinema hall, but it was a good one to have, and Malini with her candid gaze lured a generation of mesmerised males into the theatres repeatedly. What a pity that the Sinhala cinema hasn't seen a star quite like her since the 1980s.