Award-winning actress Yasodha Wimaladharma is philosophical about her outlook on life, be it her success as an actress, her friendships, her relationship with her parents or her much debated “single” status.” “What we get in this life is what we carry through ‘samsara’,” she says.

Samsaric or not, Yasodha has achieved fame and success in a career which she was thrust into during her schooldays but which she has grown to love and enjoy over the years. “I was very shy and timid in school and not someone who would have dared to be in the public eye like I am now,” she says. But as fate would have it, she was offered the role of a schoolgirl in a teledrama titled “Atttha Bindei” which was directed by her uncle Bandula Vithanage.

Happy to be single: Pic by Mangala Weerasekera

“I was 14 and yet to sit for my Ordinary Level examination when I was offered the role. I was apprehensive about it but my father who had immense faith in my abilities encouraged me to take up the challenge. That was a turning point in my life,” Yasodha recalls.

And her father R.L. Wimaladharama was correct in his recognising her hidden artistic talents because after her first appearance on television, many other offers came her way. Yasodha next took up the role in a theatrical production “Hiru Dahasa,” an adaptation of American playwright Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” in which she played the role of Emily Webb, the play’s main character. The play, staged in three parts, portrays the life of Emily as a young woman, then as a married woman and finally as a person who meets with an early death.

“It was when I started acting on stage that I learnt how important it is to live a character and also the importance of technique in acting. It was very different to acting before a camera,” she says.

It took time for Yasodha to grasp all aspects of stage acting initially such as the importance of projecting her voice. “After the first show on the first day of “Hiru Dahasa”, many in the audience complained that they could not hear my voice,” she says.
But her acting talents were no doubt impressive as she went onto win the award for Best Actress at the State Drama Festival for the play in 1989. From stage, she went onto her first movie role in “Guru Gedera” and her taken on many challenging roles since then.

But it is 27 years after she first started acting that Yasodha feels she has done her best role yet. These days she is riding high on the success of her latest film ‘Samanala Sandhawaniya’ (Butterfly Symphony) which she says is the crowning glory of her career to date.

“It is a love story but it is not about feelings that many people mistake for love. True love is about compassion, respect and sacrifice and this is what the movie is about,” she says.

The film is also the culmination of a working relationship between Yasodha and the film’s director Jayantha Chandrasiri, whom she calls her ‘guru”, which began nearly 20 years. “He is trained in Germany and the USA and he is also an actor trainer, which means every time you act with him, you also learn and grow as an actor,” she says.

The filming of Samanala Sandhawaniya was itself a holistic experience for Yasodha and the entire film crew. “We shot the film in 26 days in Nuwara Eliya .Before the shooting started, Jayantha told me to finish all my prior engagements and come there with as little on my mind as possible. It is in this frame of mind that I got into the character of Punya and immersed myself in the role. I have watched the film four times and I feel completely fulfilled as an actress in that role.”

For the crew too, the shooting of Samanala Sandhawaniya was an unforgettable experience. “There were days when after a shot was taken, the cameraman‘s eyes would be full of tears. It was an exhilarating experience doing the film and the way people, especially women, have reacted after watching it is very different to how they have responded to my other roles,” she says.

Yasodha plays the role of Punya, a middle-aged woman whose letter to her lover gets lost in the mail and is discovered by a young man – a musician, who then embarks on a quest to find the writer of the letter and towards whom he later begins to develop romantic feelings.

“Punya’s story can be anyone’s story. I have had women come up to me and ask me, ‘How did you play my story so well,” she says. In spite of playing many roles as a lover and a wife, Yasodha remains single. “I enjoy being single,’ she says with a smile when asked why she’s decided to remain single.

Her single status, Yasodha says, has helped her to devote time to her parents, particularly to her father who passed away a few years ago after ailing for some time, and now to her mother who lives with her.

“When you are an actress, it’s not easy to find a partner who understands you. Many think that the person who they see on the screen or on stage is the real me but that person is different from who I really am,” she says. It’s the same with friends. “I have several of my friends from school and we are very close. For them I am the same person they knew in school and not a well-known actress. I can be myself with them.”

She is satisfied with how things have shaped up for her in life so far, she says.  After the role of Punya, she is wondering if a better role will come her way. “The expectations will be very high after my role in Samanala Sandhawaniya so I have to be really lucky to get a better role than that in the future,” she says.

It is difficult to see any trace of her old shyness or timidity as Yasodha bids us goodbye. In place is a confident young woman, who definitely knows what she wants in life.