Jyothika’s films after her marriage speaks for themselves. Most of them are content-oriented and are socially responsible.
Jyotika said that back in the day, the portrayal of women in Tamil cinema left her ‘very upset’. “There was a phase in Tamil Nadu, when there were just one or two women-centric films. Whenever I went to the theatre as a woman, I came back feeling very upset with the way they were portrayed. This was around 2000-2006. Every time I went to the theatre, I saw how unintelligent the woman was shown as, especially in large, commercial films made for a larger audience. It raised a lot of questions in my mind,” she said.
On her part, Jyotika made a firm decision to not take up any role that she did not agree with. “I don’t want to name them but I turned down many films because the role was not respectable. It was never about the length of the role but I didn’t find it respectable enough,” she said.
Women-centric films are finally being made and watched in Tamil Nadu, Jyotika said. However, she would like to see more protagonists who are ‘35-plus’.
“There has been huge change over the last five to seven years. There are a lot of women-centric films that are being made and doing well. In the South, 90 per cent women-centric films that have released have done well as compared to male-centric films, where it is 50/50. So I think women-centric films always come with good content and we work thrice as much harder to get it right,” she said.