Like many others, Andrea Ann too had dreamt of cinema as a teenager. She was fascinated by the colourful clothes heroines wore, and the way they lived as another character on screen. However, she didn’t try to realise that dream! With a chuckle she says she was afraid. “I could bear any other loss except cinema. I couldn’t imagine being rejected from auditions. So, I didn’t try,” she adds. However, deep inside, she nursed the dream believing that it would be true once. Right now, she sounds thrilled as she lives her dream, marking her Mollywood debut with the movie Kumbarees, directed by Sagar Hari.
Andrea plays the female lead in the movie opposite Queen-fame Ashwin Jose. In Kumbarees that has been shot in Alappuzha, she appears as a village belle, opposite of her real-life persona. Andrea says, “My character Jincy is a native of Alappuzha who works in a showroom. She is a bold and simple woman. Kumbarees revolves around certain incidents that happen in the Alappuzha town. It gives a different view of the place,” says the Perumbavoor native, who became a part of the movie just two days prior to the shooting. “Though I love cinema, I had no clue about its functioning. On the first day, I could not figure out when and how takes were taken. It took me a while to get hold of the process. Ashwin and other crew members have helped in building my confidence, by creating a comfort zone,” recalls Andrea.
As the project happened quickly, she had little time to prepare for the character. “But, once I was into it, I could understand her. Over the days, I could get deep into her skin,” says Andrea, to whom facing the camera was not a challenge. She has been an emcee and television host before venturing into movies. “It was during the third year of my college that I got into emceeing,” says Andrea. “I saw a casting call and sent my bio-data with photos taken in my mobile camera. Luckily, I got selected, got into events and then to television.”
Her first television programme was Celluloid for Surya TV. She has also worked for other prominent channels such as Asianet and Mazhavil Manorama. “It has been almost two years since I started this journey. I have hosted television shows, award ceremonies and done celebrity interviews. I had done the interview of Ashwin,” she smiles.
Kumbarees has given her a new perspective about the industry and her dreams. A person who once hesitated to go for auditions now wants to continue the journey.
“I chose Kumbarees because I didn’t want to regret later in life thinking that I didn’t give cinema a shot. Now that I have done it, I love the process, and yearn for more,” she signs off.
