A Woman We Love
Ida Nerina
Every month, we feature a Woman We Love. In our August Self-Reliance Issue, we put the amazing story of actress Ida Nerina front and centre. Here's an excerpt from our exclusive interview with the woman who, we feel, epitomises the do-it-all spirit in spite of intense challenges:
The eyes, says an old Yiddish proverb, are the mirror of the soul. Any actor will tell you they are important. Of course they are. The eyes invoke a story without words. A glass microscope you peer into, and in some unconscious way, allows you to see a young girl crying out for help, or an old grandfather hunched over, tired of love.
Ida Nerina’s eyes are magic. They’re very round, bottomless, and unmissable. Look at them long enough and you can plumb the depths of her thoughts, a window into a more truthful world. Her own catalogue as an actress—with over twenty films, countless appearances on stage and in local telemovies—will give you many opportunities. In the 2008 movie Wayang, for instance, she plays a wife who has stood by her man’s side as he plies his almost-extinct wayang kulit trade. Towards the end, after dramatic ups and downs, he rewards her fortitude with a Proton Waja. (It makes more sense when you watch it.) As they sit side-by-side, he gently places his hand on hers, moves it towards the gear stick, glances back at her. She says nothing. Years of heartache and survival, however, come rushing back in one single gaze. Fragility etched all over the tributaries of her retina. Susuk, released in the same year, is the polar opposite; those eyes are often empty, drained of kindness, perfect for the role of a Machiavellian modern-day sorceress.
Those same eyes are staring at me. It’s almost 2:00 P.M. and I’m about to launch into two pages worth of questions when she interrupts the one-way conversation. “How old are you, can I ask?” In a simple purple top and jeans, she looks at me, and for a moment in an empty Italian restaurant, I feel a little naked.
“Thirty-one.”
“Thirty-one? You look about twenty-seven.”
“I know. I used to think this was a curse...”
“No, no! Trust me, no.”
She looks again, parsing me through her bulls*** filter, seeing if I say what I mean, so later on, I’ll mean what I say. Then she lets out a guffaw that fills the room. She does this a lot—moments when she’s raw, uncensored, bursts out of unspoken celebrity-built protocol. She makes for great company. When her balsamic salad arrives, she sees the waiter bend down with our plates. “Thank you very much. That looks beautiful. I’m going to take a picture.” She takes out her SLR camera and begins snapping away. After asking the waiter where he’s from—“Nigeria? I have many close friends from there!”—she tells me in an excited whisper, “I just got my first gig as a photographer.” I ask her how long she’s been learning photography and she emits a high-pitched squeal, like a girl who has been handed the keys to her dad’s Mercedes. “Four months!” She laughs again, throws her head back, and this time, it goes on for a few seconds, longer, heftier. “It’s amazing. God has been good. Life is good. Life is good.”
If you know what Ida has been through over the last few years, then that’s a statement. Especially when you measure it against her personal highs—three Malaysian Film Festival awards, countless acting nominations, the anointed favourite child of celebrated auteurs such as Shuhaimi, Aziz M. Osman, and the late Yasmin Ahmad. The daughter of politician and ex-Wanita UMNO deputy president Marina Yusoff, Ida had to climb her way through the ranks, even after her mum’s not-so-subtle rebukes of her career path. “She said, ‘You want to act? Go.’ I didn’t have a car. I got maybe one drama job in like a few months. I had to pay rent. Maggi mee and I were like this.” Her mum came around after seeing the then-twenty-eight-year-old Ida take the lead role in national laureate Noordin Hassan’s play Sirih Bertepuk Pinang Menari. “She saw that and gave her blessing. Thank God.” Soon after, she appeared in her first feature film, Selubung, as a religious deviationist. For her effort, she earned a nomination at the Malaysian Film Festival. She had made it.
Thus began a phase for Ida as one of the country’s most sought-after actors. It’s not hard to see why. Ask her to recount some of her memorable times on set and she doesn’t just tell you what happened. She transports you back in time with hand gestures, ever-changing inflections, a passion for storytelling, and yes, the eyes. Take Layar Lara, a seminal Malay film in 1997 that won Shuhaimi the top directing award at the Brussels International Independent Film Festival. “The best scene was the one with [co-star] Sidi Oraza. It required my character begging for my job back. We started shooting at eight in the morning and we didn’t finish till 2:00 A.M. I went all day with this lump in my throat, dying to cry but just holding it. So we went to this shot, this shot, holding it, up the stairs, into the room, holding it, holding it, and the very moment he whacked me with the paper, I let it go. Shumi came into the room, I was crying, and I could just see her from the corner, just doing like that.” She motions her palms downwards, much like a conductor guiding his orchestra to lower their volume. “She just did that. I just listened to her, without losing my character. That was an amazing moment.”
Read more about Ida Nerina - the challenges in her life that include the accident and that 'video' - in our August Self-Reliance Issue, out in newsstands now. Words by Jon Chew. Photographs by Victtorio Rodrigues. All outfits by Gucci. Hair and makeup by Shawn Goh.
August 10th, 2011