CINEMA & BEYOND | IN CONVERSATION

 Two Demonte Colony films, fifteen years of Bharatanatyam, and one actor still figuring out where both fit.

Meenakshi Govindarajan does not love horror. Two Demonte Colony films in, she is still the first to admit it is not her natural home. She just keeps ending up there anyway, learning a little more each time about what her craft can hold.

Ask her directly, and she does not dress it up. “I really don’t enjoy anything about horror,” she says, with the ease of someone stating a simple fact. “I’m a very scared kid also.”

What interests her is the mechanics of performing fear.

“When you film other films, you always have the other person. You react to them,” she explains. “With horror films, most of the time it’s CGI. So you have to get scared for nothing. And it can’t be fake.”

Her appearance in Demonte Colony 2 was brief, but the third film gave her a far more extensive role. With no visible threat to respond to, she had to generate fear internally and direct it towards something that would be created later.

It is the kind of acting problem she never imagined facing when performance first entered her life.

The Accidental Actor

Contrary to information that has followed her online, Meenakshi was born and raised entirely in Chennai. Her father is from Madurai and her mother from Palakkad, but Chennai is home.

Acting, however, was never part of the original plan.

“Definitely, it found me unexpectedly,” she says.

Her first ambition was dance. From the age of three until 18, Meenakshi trained in Bharatanatyam and imagined herself becoming a professional performer. Television entered her life at around 17 through a reality show, followed by cinema.

She was too young, she says, to treat those early experiences as part of a carefully designed career. Everything felt new and fascinating, so she simply followed where it led.

“Even today, if you ask me, I just go with the flow,” she says. “I don’t have a plan. God willing, it has just happened, and I’m taking it forward.”

The Dancer Inside the Actor

There is an irony worth sitting with. Fifteen years of Bharatanatyam gave Meenakshi a discipline built around control, where posture, rhythm, expression and gesture are carefully considered. Acting eventually asked her to retain that awareness while making every response feel spontaneous.

The transition happened almost without her noticing. Television did not feel like formal preparation because she was still a teenager enjoying the experience. Even during her first film, she says, she was too young to consciously build a process.

Yet Bharatanatyam had already taught her how the body can hold emotion. Its discipline remained somewhere within her, even as cinema demanded a different relationship with movement and stillness.

What she has not yet received is a script that allows both sides of her creative life to meet.

“I would love to,” she says of performing Bharatanatyam on screen. “But so far, I’ve not got an opportunity or a script like that.”

After fifteen years of training, the dancer is still waiting for her cinematic entrance.

Directors as Her Film School

Meenakshi has never attended a formal acting workshop. Her education came from sets, characters and the directors who worked closely with her.

Two collaborators have been particularly important: Suseenthiran, who directed her debut, and Ajay Gnanamuthu, with whom she worked on Cobra and the Demonte Colony films. She has completed three projects with each director.

“They’re more like my family at this point,” she says. “It’s like my home whenever I go back to those sets.”

Returning to the same director offers more than familiarity. It gives her safety—the confidence to experiment, make mistakes and learn without feeling displaced. Each collaboration still brings something new, but it begins from a foundation of trust.

“I’ve learned so much from my first two directors,” she says. “All my directors have shaped me for what I am today.”

If their sets became her classrooms, Cobra was one of her most demanding lessons.

Becoming Judith Samson

Meenakshi usually begins with a point of connection. Even when a character is unlike her, she tries to imagine how she herself might react under similar circumstances.

Judith Samson in Cobra refused that easy entry.

A mathematician who assists Interpol, Judith occupied an intellectual and professional world Meenakshi could not instinctively relate to. The role demanded that she construct a person without relying on familiar behaviour.

“It was super hard to pull off,” she says. More than any other character, Judith taught her how to move beyond personal identification and trust the information within the script and direction.

The film also taught her patience. Meenakshi signed it when she was around 18 or 19, but its journey was prolonged by production demands and the disruption of the pandemic. By the time it reached audiences, she had moved from her teenage years into adulthood.

For a young actor eagerly waiting for one of her most significant projects to be seen, the delay could have been unsettling. Instead, she learnt that cinema does not always obey the timelines imagined for it.

What Makes Her Say Yes

When Meenakshi reads a script, screen time is not the deciding factor. The character must matter to the film.

“It’s not even about the screen space,” she says. “The character should have something to do with the film.”

A smaller role can still interest her if removing it would meaningfully affect the story. What she looks for is participation rather than mere presence—a character with a reason to exist beyond filling the frame.

Her filmography has already moved between sports drama, romance, action and horror. Next, she wants to try a full-fledged romantic comedy, something she feels has not yet worked out for her. Action is also on the list.

And despite her discomfort with horror, she does not dismiss what the genre has taught her. Performing against CGI requires technical awareness, imagination and control. Fear has to appear immediate even when the actor is staring at an empty space.

That difficulty is precisely what has expanded her.

Women Moving Forward

Meenakshi is hopeful about the place women occupy in contemporary cinema.

“We are in a better place than before,” she says, pointing to women-centric films finding both strong stories and receptive audiences.

She is particularly drawn to sports dramas. The genre combines physical transformation, emotional perseverance and the kind of roles that allow women to drive a story rather than support someone else’s journey.

She also wants to see more stories of women’s empowerment, although she recognises that this shift is already underway. Recent films have shown her that women can lead narratives without being treated as a commercial risk.

For Meenakshi, the hope is not simply for more female characters, but for continued momentum—more genres, greater narrative responsibility and more women occupying the centre of the frame.

The Next Frame Awaits

With filming on Demonte Colony 3 complete, Meenakshi is moving towards roles in different emotional worlds.

She is set to appear opposite Arulnithi again in My Dear Sister, this time as his romantic interest. A Tamil devotional film with Vaibhav is also in progress, guided by the director associated with the Malayalam film Malikappuram.

Together, the projects move her away from the space in which audiences may most recently recognise her: from supernatural fear to romance and devotion.

Still waiting is the role that makes use of her Bharatanatyam training. Also waiting are the rom-com and action film she would readily accept if the right scripts arrive.

She is not forcing any of them into a rigid career plan. That has never been her way.

Zero-Plan Travel

If Meenakshi’s career has unfolded by going with the flow, her travels are even less structured.

“I’m very spontaneous,” she says. “I pack my bag.”

Over the past few years, travel has become her primary hobby. She has moved through Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Amsterdam with almost no fixed plan. Iceland was once a major bucket-list destination; she has now crossed it off.

A shoot in Malta for Demonte Colony 3 gave her another opening. She extended the trip and travelled to Barcelona and Madrid, with Madrid becoming the unexpected favourite.

Spain is often introduced through Barcelona, but Meenakshi believes Madrid deserves equal attention—particularly for travellers interested in food, drinks and a city that rewards wandering.

That spontaneity reaches her wardrobe too. Despite spending much of her life dressed for Bharatanatyam, television, films and public appearances, her personal style is resolutely simple.

“My friends tell me, ‘If you’re wearing this, I’m not coming out with you,’” she laughs. On holiday, comfort wins completely.

No Easy Advice

Ask what she would tell a young woman hoping to enter Tamil cinema, and Meenakshi resists pretending there is a formula.

She is still trying to understand how her own journey happened. Timing, circumstances, collaborators and faith all played their part. What worked for her cannot simply be converted into instructions for somebody else.

Her advice is therefore modest: stay consistent, remain positive and continue working towards what matters to you.

She does not offer positivity as an easy cure. Approaching her mid-twenties, she admits that she has her own low points and moments of uncertainty.

Perhaps that honesty explains her career better than a formula could. Meenakshi is still learning, still moving and still accepting that not every destination needs to be known in advance.

For now, the dancer keeps entering unfamiliar frames—even the dark ones—and discovering what else she can do.