JP/Wienda Parwitasari

She has played different roles, but actress Raihaanun Soeriaatmadja has no plans to get stuck in a certain type of character.

Actress Raihaanun Soeriaatmadja said she wants to develop her acting skills by playing different characters from one movie to another.

Getting stuck playing similar characters is not something she plans for her future career.

“I love to have a lot of variations in the types of character roles that I take,” the 28-year-old told The Jakarta Post in a recent interview.

Her latest venture was in Putrama Tuta’s magic realism flick titled Happy Birthday Every Day, in which she played a character that she had never taken on before throughout her career.

In her previous movies, she said her characters all had different backgrounds — from a teenager to a 28-year-old woman and a religious girl who wears a hijab. They all shared a common trait of being melancholic, she added.

“In Happy Birthday Every Day, I got to play a character that did not require me to cry or to look sad. I also had the freedom to explore the character’s extroverted nature and to interpret who she is as freely as I could. So, when Puta showed me the script, I immediately fell in love,” she said.

Happy Birthday Every Day is the second feature film that Raihaanun has starred in after her role in the critically acclaimed Lovely Man (2011).

Prior to Happy Birthday Every Day, she starred in an independent film about polygamy called Sendiri Diana Sendiri (Following Diana) in 2015 and in a road movie called Salawaku (2016), for which she won her first Citra Award for being best supporting actress.

Her four-year hiatus from the film industry came following her decision to be foremost a mother for her children.

After beginning her career as a finalist in the Gadis Sampul model hunt and starring in several TV soap operas, Raihaanun made a splash in the national film scene after taking on her first role in a feature film, the remake of Badai Pasti Berlalu (The Storm Will Pass).

Just when she was at the top of her career at the age of 18, she decided to get married to director Teddy Soeriaatmadja, who also directed her in Badai Pasti Berlalu.

“Not long after I got married, in 2008 I had a baby and then another one not long after,” said Raihaanun. “So, at that time I did not have a lot of time for shooting and filming because I needed to take care of my babies. Shooting for a film, as you might know, takes a lot of time and preparation.”

As a self-taught actress, Raihaanun said that it was very important to her to have a sufficient amount of time to prepare and to get into a character if she wanted to fully present her best craft in a film.

“I have never taken a formal acting class, so it is kind of hard for me to define how to act for a certain character. I also do not have the ability to define what good acting is. I personally feel I am not at that level yet to judge the quality of acting,” she said.

“What I always do basically is find someone who has similar stories with the character that I am about to portray and that person for me will become a reference for the character.”

Now after her children — Millan Haruna Soeriaatmadja and Kafka Soeriaatmadja — have grown up enough to be somewhat self-reliant, she felt it was the perfect time for her to return to doing what she loved: exploring new characters and portraying them in films.

“I mean, when you talk about what I want to do in the future in my film career, I still has so many dreams and aspirations. There are so many characters that I have yet to explore and there are so many stories that I want to tell,” she said.

“For example, I still want to play a character like The Bride in the Kill Bill films. I also want to play in a musical because I believe delivering dialogue by singing is an exciting challenge for any actress.”

Raihaanun did not consider her victory in the 2016 Citra Award for best supporting actress as a burden forcing her to raise her standards in her future career as an actress.

Instead, she considered it a privilege and a gift that she was very thankful for, much like her status as a mother, which she said she considers to be her primary role.

“First and foremost for me is that I am a mother. Although I might have more free time to explore my film career today, if the time calls for me to do my duty as a mother, I will make it the main priority.”

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