| Express Train to Stardom |
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| October 2007 | |
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Many actors struggle for years before they achieve their big break. Amara Karan is not one of them. The British actress of Sri Lankan descent was a rising
theater star and an award-winning director of a short film when she received
the opportunity to audition for Wes Anderson’s latest film, The Darjeeling
Limited. The opportunity came merely three weeks after graduating from drama school,
and Karan was eager to try out for the part. She whirled through several rounds
of auditions, including meeting with the director and actors in And what a movie for the 24-year-old actress to make her debut in. The critically acclaimed The Darjeeling Limited focuses on the journey of the three Whitman brothers, played by Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman, who come to India to reconnect with each other a year after their father’s death. The brothers travel on the Darjeeling Limited train, and when not enmeshed in sibling rivalries or their own self-absorption, they are entranced by the vibrant Indian landscape rambling by—and by Rita, an attractive stewardess played by Karan. She describes Rita as “quite a special character to play—it’s beyond my dreams to play someone so idiosyncratic.” Karan was drawn to the role because “she’s not your standard Indian stewardess or standard Indian girl. That’s what’s so fantastic about this role. Not only was it fun to play, but she’s also so unique and doesn’t fit any cliché, which you can’t say about a lot of roles in my position as an actor that you’re put up for.”
Like the Whitmans, Rita is experiencing a transitory phase in her life, a time of self-discovery. “I think to my character, Jack represents an exciting, exotic change in her life from working on this train, doing this monotonous job. She’s too intelligent for the job she is doing, so it’s just a means to an end really.” The role also presented some challenges, including a scene with a snake (Karan fears them) and her first romantic scene, when Rita and Jack have a tryst on the train. “The best way to deal with it is not to think about it, and pretend it’s not happening until you have to do it and then you’re fine. When you have drama school and trained to be an actor, you’re not trained to do every scene conceivable. You have to learn how to be open to different things. So you use those skills in your approach, whether it’s doing a romantic scene or imagining you’re going to commit murder. I had not done something like [the romantic scene] before, so I had to use my imagination.” Karan’s next role is in the December release St. Trinian’s, a comedy about wayward schoolgirls, in which she plays Peaches, a girl originally characterized as “blond and posh.” Karan believes her breakthrough in Darjeeling is leading her to other interesting and varied parts. “It’s fantastic to play a role [like Peaches] in which race is not the most integral thing to the part. So I have been really fortunate. Not that I wouldn’t want to play a more familiar character in my film consciousness or artistic consciousness, but so far I’ve been very lucky to avoid the cliché.” * The Darjeeling Limited opens in select cities throughout October. For more information, click here. Comments (0)
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By Kirthana Ramisetti
Rita stirs one brother, Schwartzman’s Jack, out of his
ex-girlfriend-induced malaise with her quiet charms and unexpressed longings.
She has a broken relationship of her own with the train’s Chief Steward, and
her conflicting emotions about the two men deepen her role beyond the
conventional love interest. While her role as a gorgeous foreign stewardess who
enchants American men could have been a one-note character, in a few short
scenes Karan infuses the enigmatic Rita with a compelling intelligence and
vulnerability that a whole film could be built around.
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