In a recent interview, Nithya Menen opened up about her journey as an actor in the film industryNithya Menen recently gave an interview to ‘Reel Strugglers by Studio91’, which was hosted by Karan, where she spoke up on a lot of things on her ‘Unfiltered Journey’ in the world of cinema. The news of the actress saying “I have never faced any problems in the Telugu Industry but I faced a lot of problems in the Tamil Industry. A Tamil hero harassed me while shooting for a film…,” are utterly baseless and erroneous. Some social media handles have spread misinformation until a journalist checked with the actress and put out a post clarifying the same with the actress’ consent. However, Nithya Menen has shared valuable insights on her experience of being an actor and working in the industry that happened by chance.Below are a few snippets about the things she experienced as an actor.On giving space to the Actors When the actor/actress doesn’t speak the language, then there’s this one AD who’s there reading out the lines prompting or telling the actors to pronounce the words in a certain way. So when an AD comes to me and tells the lines, I always tell them “You’re telling me the lines, don’t give me the acting.” It’s very important that you do that because they tend to do that and they think that’s what they’re supposed to do. The environment should be created and that is something that I really miss while working in our films. People don’t consider creating the right environment for an actor important at all. It’s not at all part of the process, which is strange because that’s the main thing. You need to maintain silence on the set especially when there are intense scenes, and there is a need for some decorum on the set, to understand beyond just the physicality of it. To give the actor the space is something we’ve still not achieved. Dealing with unhappiness in work in the initial yearsThere was a time when there were so many things happening around me that I slightly lost control over. Especially in the Telugu industry, where there were so many rules, I think it started to go in that direction where I started getting steadily unhappy with myself and life. The first six years of my life in films, which were also the successful years, but I was so extremely unhappy as a person. I just hated every day and minute of it. I wanted to be a wildlife filmmaker, I wanted to go where there’s nature and I wanted to be in silence, but I was in a job which was diametrically opposite to that - noise, chaos, egos, superficiality, etc. The good thing with me is that I was never desperate to be in films or an actor. Life matters more to me and I realised I wasn’t okay, so I paused and took a break. And that break resulted in a paradigm shift and changed everything for me.Response to unfair bullying and body shamingBeing an actress, being in the public eye and putting on weight, it was an adventure just to be watched. What all people make it look like, oh my goodness! The fake pictures, the insensitive comments, fake stuff all over the internet… for me honestly, I just sat back and watched all this because my life was going so good and I was so happy, so I thought “how shallow, how sad and how little people expose themselves. All they want to see when they see a person is their physicality, even someone like me, as I have never sold my physicality, even with my job and yet all that I was worth was my body. All those shallow thoughts… they mean nothing. What people say, their thought process… it is so low in value because they have no idea what they’re talking about and it is a very, very limited perspective.