From the black hatchback she bought on impulse to the home she guards closely, from the camera she once imagined standing behind to the inner journey she is choosing to prioritise today — these are the choices, interests and experiences shaping Nithya Menen now.

At sixteen, when most people might have asked for something more predictable, Nithya Menen asked for a learner’s licence. Driving has stayed with her ever since.

Years later, when it was time for her first car, she did not wait for the perfect moment. Her parents were sceptical about buying one, so Nithya approached the problem with her own logic: choose the smallest car she knew.

She called a Hyundai showroom and asked whether they had an i10. They did. She told them she was coming.

She was around 22 or 23, and somewhere in Bengaluru’s evening rush, she drove home in a new black Hyundai i10, navigating the traffic on Richmond Road in a car she had chosen entirely for herself.

She still has it.

To her, it is no longer simply an old hatchback. It has become a companion.

That attachment makes sense once Nithya begins talking about automobiles more generally. She loves driving and still drives herself almost everywhere, including between Bengaluru and Chennai, something that routinely surprises people on film sets.

It is one of those details that sits slightly outside the familiar public image of Nithya Menen: an actor whose career has stretched across languages and years, from early appearances to films such as Ala Modalaindi, Bangalore Days, OK Kanmani, Mersal and Thiruchitrambalam, for which she received the National Film Award for Best Actress.

But ask what occupies her mind today, and cinema is not the first thing she reaches for.

BECOMING HER OWN PROJECT

For roughly the past year and a half, Nithya’s attention has turned inward.

“Career is really not always a sort of forefront in my life,” she says. Work remains part of her life, but it is not necessarily its organising principle.

Instead, she talks about physical health, understanding herself and what she describes as “growing in a soul capacity.”

“My growth, my physical health, understanding myself… that is at the forefront right now. And it’s a wonderful time.”

For Nithya, this internal work is not separate from what she hopes to create. She sees it almost as a prerequisite.

“When you keep working on yourself, and when you keep discovering more and more, coming closer to the truth of things… then I believe that you can do things that are more meaningful in the world.”

That inward turn has coincided with a quieter period professionally, but not a retreat from acting. Nithya calls acting her primary profession and something that feels almost destined for her.

Alongside it, Keyuri, her production venture, is slowly taking shape. She does not see producing and acting as competing identities. A film she produces could also be one she performs in or contributes to in multiple capacities.

“With Keyuri, it’s a journey,” she says. “It’s not something that can just happen in a day or two. It takes time to build something like that.”

THE OTHER SIDE OF THE CAMERA

Long before Ala Modalaindi redirected her towards acting, Nithya imagined herself somewhere else on a film set: behind the camera.

That interest never disappeared.

“I’ve always felt more drawn to the jobs that were behind camera,” she says.

Part of the attraction was surprisingly simple. Costumes, makeup and the constant requirement to be camera-ready never made her feel particularly free. She imagined instead working in a loose T-shirt, hair tied back, absorbed in the process.

The cinematography department remains the one she watches most closely.

“I always watch what they do,” she says. “I try to understand what they’re doing.”

She describes herself as naturally observant, someone who absorbs details even without consciously trying.

Her fascination with the technical side does not make her romanticise film sets themselves. Nithya calls them unique, but also acknowledges how uncomfortable and chaotic they can be. Visitors, she notes, often become restless within minutes.

That clear-eyed view extends to her own craft.

The recognisable quality that carries through her performances, she argues, is not something externally constructed. It comes from responding instinctively and truthfully.

“If Nithya was in that situation, how she would react is exactly what you see,” she says.

For her, individuality comes from a “lack of facade and lack of acting”—allowing something real to remain visible rather than layering a performance over it.

“Nobody else can be me. I can’t be anybody else.”

It is also why she considers vulnerability essential to acting. Without bringing something genuinely personal into a performance, she believes an actor risks becoming generic.

WHEN SOMETHING RIGID BREAKS

Some roles, however, resist that natural ease.

Playing Arasi in Thalaivan Thalaivii challenged Nithya in a way that reminded her of Kanchana, pulling her towards an emotional space far from her instinctive self.

She does not necessarily seek such roles out.

“I don’t want to, but I seem to be doing it,” she says.

Yet when a character feels sufficiently far away, curiosity takes over. There is value, she believes, in encountering something rigid within yourself and allowing the work to challenge it.

“If there is something that is rigid and not flexible, and if that’s being challenged, and if it breaks, it’s a wonderful thing.”

She sees that breaking not merely as an acting exercise but as another form of growth.

The way she leaves characters behind is equally revealing. Nithya rarely takes costumes, props or keepsakes from sets. Once a film is finished, she prefers the simplicity of letting it go.

There was one exception.

Ala Modalaindi, her first Telugu film and an important breakthrough, featured a bracelet that mattered within the story. The film itself meant a great deal because she was working with friends and people she loved, so she kept it.

She laughs when admitting that she no longer knows where it is.

Even the souvenir eventually became something she could release.

A JOURNEY WITHOUT A CALL SHEET

In 2019, one experience took Nithya outside the usual rhythm of film travel when she joined part of the Cauvery Calling motorcycle convoy.

The reality was not particularly glamorous. There was rain, considerable discomfort and a moment when everyone ended up huddled together beneath a tent-like shelter to eat.

Yet she remembers another side to it.

“Generally, you don’t think of discomfort as something enjoyable, but there is a different kind of fun in experiences like that too.”

Would she do it again? “Probably not,” she says, laughing.

Shoots already involve enough physical discomfort. Given the choice, her holidays run in the opposite direction: comfortable, slow and long enough to properly experience a place.

THREE MOODS, THREE GETAWAYS

• To switch off — Maldives: Her choice for doing absolutely nothing, and still high on her personal travel list.
• To explore — Peru: A place she found fascinating, with plenty to discover on foot.
• To eat well — Dubai: Even as a vegetarian who does not consider herself a major foodie, she was impressed by the quality and flavour of the food.
• Also on the list — Italy: Another destination she hopes to make time for.
• Her ideal holiday: A few unhurried weeks rather than a rushed itinerary.

MAKING SPACE FOR QUIETER STORIES

Keyuri gives Nithya another way to act on the tastes she has developed over years of watching and making films.

She sees significantly more room today for restrained, individual filmmaking than when she entered the industry around fifteen years ago. At the time, she says, a quiet film could be made, but often entirely at the filmmaker’s own risk.

Today, that has shifted.

“There is a space, and things do work,” she says, pointing to The Great Indian Kitchen as an example of a distinctive film finding appreciation.

For filmmakers, that response does not always need to translate into hundred- or two-hundred-crore numbers to be meaningful. Keyuri, in part, is about contributing to that space and backing the kind of work Nithya herself wants to see.

WHEN EVERYTHING FALLS APART

Her belief in growth is not presented as something that has always felt reassuring.

There was a period when her professional and personal worlds seemed to collapse simultaneously.

“It genuinely felt like my whole world was falling apart,” she says.

Nithya does not pretend to be fine in those moments. Her instinct is to withdraw and give herself space.

But distance has also changed how she sees those periods. She believes that when something goes badly wrong, it can precede an equally significant rise.

Life did eventually improve. What felt like collapse became, in retrospect, transformation—disorienting while it was happening, but important once she could see what followed.

THE PLACE SHE KEEPS FOR HERSELF

Then there is home.

For Nithya, it is sacred—not in the polished celebrity-home-tour sense of the word, but because it has been assembled slowly and privately.

She is deeply interested in interiors and spent years putting the space together. Everything in it has been hand-picked by her.

“My home itself is very special to me,” she says.

There is no single favourite corner that could explain her because the entire space feels personal. She is equally selective about who enters it, conscious of the energy she allows inside and what she prefers to keep outside.

Time away from work often means returning to other things that feel familiar.

Nithya does not read continuously for the sake of reading. She tends to pick something up when a particular subject or feeling draws her towards it. Recently, nostalgia took her back to Harry Potter, which she first read at around twelve.

Vintage and retro Hindi music offer another route to childhood. Her parents played those songs while she was growing up; now, she jokes, she probably listens to them more than they do. Western music and rap enter depending on her mood.

On screen, she has been watching Ted Lasso. Modern Family and Schitt’s Creek are among the comfort shows she happily returns to.

ON HER OWN TERMS

There is an interesting contradiction running through Nithya’s present chapter.

She remains an actor, a profession built around inhabiting other people, while much of her attention is currently devoted to understanding herself. She is building a production house but refuses to rush the process. She loves cinema while remaining unsentimental about the reality of a film set. She believes vulnerability is essential to acting while guarding the privacy of her own space closely.

And when a role or a period in life challenges something rigid within her, she seems increasingly willing to let it break.

Perhaps that is what separates this chapter from the earlier phases of a career so easily described through films, languages, awards and milestones.

The outward markers remain. Acting continues. Keyuri is taking shape. The National Award is part of the story.

But Nithya’s own measure of the present is considerably more personal: her health, her inner life, what she wants to build, what she wants to let go of and the space she is allowing herself to understand all of it.

Asked what she believes she will remember about this exact period once the headlines surrounding it have faded, she does not reach for a film or an award.

The answer comes without much hesitation:

“That it was the most important period of my life.”