Otje Narulita: A Star is Named

Otje Narulita, born in Jakarta in 1944, was a little girl with a “big obsession”:  Mesmerized by Elizabeth Taylor on the silver screen, she dreamed of being a film actor. When at 16 she won the role of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, her dream came true. And how she loved it – the acting, the glamour, the parties.

One such party in the early 1960s changed her life – or, at the very least, her name.

Otje and fellow actor Rima Melati – then known as Lientje – were invited to a party at the palace.

“I came late, and everybody was there on the veranda,” she recalls. “When I arrived, Rima shouted: ‘There is Otje!’”

The Dutch sounds caught the ear of then president Sukarno.

 “Bung Karno said, ‘What? Ch? Ch? Ch?’ Because he was sensitive and Otje is a Dutch name. He wanted us to have an Indonesian name.”

So Lientje became Rima and Otje chose Sari, meaning “essence”.

As Otje, Sari says, “I was not very famous. I became more famous under the name Sari. I have Bung Karno to thank for changing my name. And Lientje too – she became more famous afterward also.”

Sari went on to make 35 films, continuing to act until 1984. Although she longed to become an international actor, she had to accept her height (she is tiny) was a barrier. But in time acting led her to writing.

It began when a journalist asked her to write her impressions of a Taipei film festival. To her surprise, he published her letter in its entirety – and asked for another one when she went to Japan.
Writing, she realized, was something she could do regardless of her size. She wrote prolifically for magazines, also penning two romance novels, a few novellas and several short stories.

As a film star, she found it difficult to be taken seriously as a writer, with some suggesting the publications only used her for her name; one senior journalist accused her of just wanting to “make a sensation”.

For Sari, that was a challenge.

“I said, ‘OK, I will show you that I am serious.’”

She worked hard, and in 10 years was editor-in-chief. She was later chosen as the first editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan when it came to Indonesia, before moving to her current position as Group Editor of Star Media.

“I said I’d show you,” she says with her trademark cheeky chuckle. “I’m still here. I’m serious.”

Back to The top page