Parvathy Thiruvothu says Malayalam audience kept her from being written off

Parvathy Thiruvothu says speaking her mind nearly cost her a career. She credits the Malayalam audience with keeping her in the industry for two decades.

"I was almost written off," the actor said in an interview. "I was at the edge but I built a house there." She said stubbornness is why she will not leave. She called her tie with viewers "almost like a sacred bond": they may love her, hate her or ignore her, but they will always make a good film a success.

She knows speaking out comes at a cost. Still, she said she cannot imagine having influence and not using it to make the world better. She added that she knows people in other industries who took a stand and were pushed out completely.

Her newest film has given that bond fresh proof. Pradhama Drishtya Kuttakkar, where Parvathy plays a police officer for the first time, has crossed Rs 50 crore at the box office. She said she knew it would be a good movie, but the scale of the response surprised her.

On trolling, she said she is "never backing down". The abuse becomes hard to bear when it turns into death threats, rape threats and stalking. At that point, she said, "you start living with a kind of fear."

Off screen, she is one of the founding members of the Women in Cinema Collective, formed in 2017 to stand up for women artists in Malayalam cinema. When she first joined the industry, she recalled, she was told to do song and dance films and item songs, because a heroine's shelf life was supposed to be short. She made her own path instead.