Living up to fame is not what matters

Living up to fame is not what matters

By Yogita Tahil Ramani

JAKARTA (JP): If good looks were all that counted to reach the
top echelons of the TV and film world, few would fit the bill
better than Khadijah Azhari, popularly known as Ayu Azhari.

Tall and full-bodied, with an aquiline nose and straight,
thick black hair, the 28-year-old mother of four from Jakarta
looks every inch like she was born to be a star.

Except it was not that easy. From a family which upholds
Islamic norms, Ayu found her Afghan mother and grandmother were
often outraged by what they saw of her on and off the screen.

"Well, it was basically the thigh-length skirts and camera
tricks of love scenes on the screen. Come to think of it, there
was more," she smirked.

An idealist and dreamer, the eldest of eight in the family
yearned to have her own family and "foolishly married" at 19 to a
musician wanna-be.

Between juggling modeling, a baby and a husband, she still
found time to act. It paid off. She won the national film award
for best supporting actress for her role in Dua Kekasih (Two
Lovers).

Her husband turned out a "drug addict" and she spent no time
in divorcing him -- "I cared for him, but then I knew that if I
continued having close relations with him, I might get involved
too."

She has gone on to play in at least 20 movies and several
sinetron (TV drama series), for which she won best actress awards
for her roles in Vonis Kepagian (Premature Verdict, 1996) and
Perkawinan Siti Zubaedah (The Marriage of Siti Zubaedah) in 1997.

With talent and hard work, the money rained on her. Now well-
settled with her second husband and children, the actress
commands more than Rp 70 million per sinetron episode. Movie
critics say her take works out over the several episodes to be
much more than the usual Rp 500 million check for a single movie.

She is a serious actress and family oriented, which has led TV
and film people to consider her simple-minded. One director puts
it, "Ayu will laughingly chuck away money and a promising career
for the sake of her children and husband."

Ayu has her reasons. She had to make very difficult decisions
at a very young age. She would never admit to it, but it shows in
the way she tends to take immediate control of difficult
situations, without her realizing it.

While walking down a road to Hotel Atlet Century Park in
Central Jakarta for an interview with The Jakarta Post, her young
son fell down and hit his knee on the pavement. He cried and
begged to be carried.

She bent down, held her son's arms lightly and looked at him
sternly. "Look, you cannot cry this way. You will attract
attention. When we reach the hotel, you can sleep on the sofa.
Fine?" The three-and-a-half-year-old boy nodded and stopped
crying.

With this same determined, practical mindset, she shifted from
playing movies to TV series. Movie stars had egos to maintain,
including Ayu. But she also felt that she had her "pragmatism to
live up to".

Ayu said that all movie stars needed reassurance of who they
were, and it could only come through their craft.

"How are they going to get that if they don't act?"

She slipped into roles of the second wife, a cheap prostitute
and several more which other high-priced Indonesian actresses
shrugged off simply because they were in sinetron. Currently, she
is busy shooting her next Multivision Plus sinetron titled Satu
di Antara Dua Pilihan (One Among Two Choices) and awaiting the
release of Slamet Rahardjo's movie, Telegram in Jakarta. Playing
the role of a woman who emotionally motivates a troubled
journalist, the movie will be Ayu's return to the silver screen.

The following are excerpts from an interview last week.

Question: Most TV series today are mediocre soap operas
telling of spouse-changes and the next fashion statement. Aren't
you embarrassed to act in them?

Answer: The only difference I see in the movies and TV series
I act in is that one is made with celluloid film and the other a
video camera. It all depends on a good director. Many of them
have egocentric mentalities. They might dabble with the idea of
making good productions by checking lights or cajole actors with
minimalist statements once in a while. But, on the whole, they
concentrate on individual goals ... like concentrating on
exploiting the best of one actor or actress' capabilities on
screen.

This should not do. Professional actors will act their best
and, yes, the director's hand always helps but the attention span
must be divided over all factors, from lighting, dialog delivery,
camerawork and research, may it be on a subject about second
choices for a wife like in Istri Pilihan (The Wife of Choice) or
maternity care, in the case of Perkawinan Siti Zubaedah.

Q: What is it that you call acting?

A: During my study sessions with Pak Teguh Karya for Ibunda, (she
was 16), he always told me this one thing. Just take care of
what's inside of you. Without it, a potentially good actor with
the best hairdo, dress and look, is nothing but a mannequin
delivering dialog. I would go up and ask him: "What kind of dress
would you like me to wear?" He would say: "Please, other people
will take care of your outsides." Whether a film or a play, there
will always be someone taking care of makeup, dress, hair and
sets. To adjust and act out different kinds of roles comes from
one's inside.

Q: In 1997, your role in the movie Without Mercy was remembered
more for the love scene than the struggling drug addict. How does
this fit in into acting?

A: There I played a drug addict who tried to make good of her
life, but couldn't because her life was controlled by heroin. In
the particular love scene, I was not nude but had scanty
clothing on. Scenes were shot from the bust up and in a manner
that was to depict a nude scene. I had no hangups with love
scenes then. I was unmarried and free. I know I did not do love
scenes because I asked for them, but because they were required
of me. It was acting, pretending, and I had the job of making it
look real just like everybody else did on the sets.

Q: How do you feel about audience reactions to those scenes?

A: What people think afterwards comes out of pent-up frustrations
that come with being hypocrites. So they go talking that I am too
daring, I don't have any morality, I play in pornographic movies.
Well, if that is the case, then I would say that I have done my
job in acting out the scenes effectively.

Q: Do real emotions ever get caught up during heated moments in
such scenes?

A: When I am in such a scene, one has to control one's emotions,
not get fired up in the process and deliver a good scene. That is
what acting is all about. The fact that the cameraman can
convince audiences that I am naked in a love scene means that he
has done his job. We are professionals, and believe me when I say
this, acting is not a joke. It is a science of make-believe and
delivering a real message.

Q: It is widely known that your mother would accompany you to
shooting locations when you were very young. What did she think
of your acting in movies then?

A: I started acting when I was 15. My first movie was Akibat Buah
Terlarang (The Result of Forbidden Fruit). My mother, who used to
often accompany me to on location, knew that odd images tend to
stick to young, good-looking girls, but never for the life of her
imagined the kind that stuck to me. I remember she used to get a
little edgy when she would see me holding hands with actors at
shoots and wearing the thigh-length skirts I was required to
wear. But the real blow came when she was actually sitting in the
movie theater watching my movies.

Q: What happened then?

A: You see, a big screen tends to magnify reputations out of
proportion. When you walk in a thigh-length skirt today, guys
might whistle and go, nice dress, and the youngsters will go,
hey, that's fashion. But portray that on the big screen and whoa,
you have yourselves one big thigh reflected in eyes. The thigh
stands out on screen. So one can imagine what camera tricks on
near-kisses did to my mother. Nevertheless, aftershocks never
lasted long and my family always supported me, because they knew
I was quite serious about acting.

Q: You started your acting career at 15, when you were in high
school...

A: After high school at SMU 6 in Bulungan, South Jakarta, I took
up modeling and film offers came. I was and still am a private
person. I did not want to belong to everybody. But the offer of
acting out not only a good role, but with the now late Tuti Indra
Malaon was just too good to resist. I never took formal acting
classes, but I did take up a course for a month or so in Los
Angeles and another offered at the Indonesian Film Artists Union
(Parfi) when I had just started acting in movies.

Q: What interested you in acting?

A: I never liked acting before. When I was a kid, I wanted to be
a pediatrician thanks to this one childhood experience. My
neighborhood doctor once misdiagnosed a tummy ache and fever for
malaria. He actually gave me this bitter medicine which irritated
my liver. There was this minor swelling, my family doctor called
it poisoning by medicine. I was about nine or ten and I knew then
I wanted to be a pediatrician. But then when I started acting,
the pediatrician fever gradually wore off and so, I learned to
act. People said I had talent. Word got around and finally came
the break from Pak Teguh.

Q: You seem to be a strong family person. You had your suspicions
that your first husband was a drug addict and you chose to leave
him...

A: You see, leaving someone is a way of helping someone, too. I
knew my first husband, Djody Gondokusumo, from since we were
really young. Ever since I was little, I always told my mother
that I wanted to marry at age 20. I finished high school at 18,
went out with him officially when I was 19 and got married soon
after. I was satisfied with the fact that somebody actually liked
me and wanted to make me as his wife. He was 19 also (laughs).
Ya, I guess you could call it first love, literally.

Q: What happened to the love?

A: We got married, and soon after I suspected that he was heavily
into drugs. His living with me then just became too dangerous. He
was in a rock band. I was so young. I did not even understand the
meaning of family. I had my first baby when I was 20. He wanted
to become somebody he wanted to be and I likewise. We did many
things that were not good for the family. It was just too risky
and so our parents intervened. They got us separated because
again, it was not good for Hassan, (formerly known as Axl), our
firstborn. He (Djody) had to fix himself, you know. Now I know it
was drugs. Then, I didn't. My parents knew.

I suspected his problem but could not bring myself to believe
it. I used to say: "Oh come on how could he be into drugs?" Much
later, the actress girlfriend he was sharing his drugs with
during our marriage died of an overdose. That was when he knew
that he had to set himself straight. Just this August he went for
treatment in a hospital in Seattle. I think he's doing much
better now.

Q: How does Hassan take his absence?

A: My first son was not affected much by our divorce because he
was just born then. But even though he is seven, he does know
that Djody is his father. He is happy that he has two fathers.

Q: How did you meet your second husband and what is he doing
currently?

A: A couple of years after the divorce, I met my second husband
at a friend's party. Alhamdullilah (Thank God), Teemu Kaariainen,
(now Muhammad Yusuf), converted for me. We got married soon
after. I am very lucky. Most Europeans (he is Finnish) I know
don't usually care much about religion. They might be born
Christians but they never really believe. Yusuf was studying
before our marriage. I am a year older than him. I was born Nov.
19, 1970. When I met Yusuf, I never thought I would marry him. We
were just friends, and I was still waiting for Djody to get
better because I thought that in life you fall in love just once.
He objected initially to my acting but now he does not. He knows
what acting means to me, and the people I affect with my acting.

Q: How long do you plan to act?

A: Allah has put me as an actress at this point. Allah will
probably show me the way later, too, and what my position in this
world will be. I don't know why I am still an actress, why I
still do it. Definitely not for the money. In any case, it is
through this acting that I convey messages to society.

Q: What is your next project?

A: My next project is a TV show, which I will present myself, for
the coming Ramadhan month. It's called Pesona Islami (Islamic
Enchantment). I would call it an informative awareness package
that will tell people of their origins. I believe all souls come
from heaven. People today don't think of that. I want to remind
them again: How else will they find peace?