You can’t find Kani Kusruti easily. Her house is off a highway, down a winding, forested lane in Goa, with no signposts. Google Maps will take you only so far and no further.Through the trees, I spot a likely house, and after ringing the bell, and waiting, I call her. “Are you in front of a yellow house or a green house?” she asks, in a tone which feels like she’s said the same thing a million times over. The first is her office, the second is home: no one’s at work, it’s a public holiday. I head to the house with the green facade, and there she is, the actor who has had a brilliant 2024, with two of her films still being feted around the globe.As Anila, the mother of a difficult 18-year-old in Shuchi Talati’s Sundance breakout ‘Girls Will Be Girls‘, she gives us a complex character rarely seen in Indian cinema. When Mira (Preeti Panigrahi) invites her crush Sri home (Kesav Binoy Kiron), it is Anila’s unexpected third-wheeling between the two which heightens tensions, leading to an even more unexpected resolution.In Payal Kapadia’s Cannes winner ‘All We Imagine As Light‘, she becomes Prabha, a Malayali nurse, trying to find her comfort zone in alien Mumbai, and turning into a supportive figure to the younger, flightier Anu (Divya Prabhu), even as she finds solace in Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), an older colleague from her hospital.In two web-series, also out last year, she plays that character who effortlessly catches the eye regardless of the length of the role — as a wildlife conservation officer in Richie Mehta’s ‘Poacher’ which is even smaller than the nimble martial arts expert in Abhishek Chaubey’s ‘Killer Soup’ — she makes you miss her when she’s not on screen.For someone who has been on the best actress lists of some of the toughest-to-please film critics not just in India, but internationally, Kani comes off as a remarkably reluctant actor. “Acting is not my passion”, she says, as we settle down for our chat. She slides to the floor which seems like her natural habitat; I join her, “It was never my passion. It’s only in the last seven to eight years that I’ve started looking at it as something I can do.”As a child in Trivandrum she remembers going to the ‘first day, second show’, a weekly ritual, with her parents. Being out and about at night was more of a joy than the film itself, during which she usually nodded off, waking up only when a vigorous dance came on. Clowning, moving her body, manipulating puppets, using masks, were more her thing, and that she found in theatre.Story continues below this adOr rather, theatre found her. Once, she was part of a street theatre during a protest her activist parents took her to. They wanted a child actor, so she did it, just for a lark. Then, when she was 10 or 11, her father asked her to pack her bags — this, during school term — and deposited her at a theatre workshop where she was the youngest participant, zoning out in theory classes and enjoying the practical parts, which included making papier-mâché puppets and doing exercises, which opened up her mind. Kani Kusruti at home in Goa (Photo: Veepul Rege)The workshop ended with a performance, which she remembers as being spectacular. With that began her deep association with theatre. When she was at a theatre school in Thrissur, an actor’s physicality, while playing a spider, left a deep impact. Physical theatre touched her the most and she began savouring live performances, traditional dance forms (Koodiyattam, Kathakali, Bharatanatyam) and music, both Carnatic and Hindustani.“Cinema was never for me,” she says, laughing, “I was always falling asleep, honestly!” For a time, it seemed that theatre wasn’t going to be for her, either. “At 15 or 16, I was this shy, embarrassed girl, wanting to be in everyone’s good books.”It was only when her “very progressive” parents pushed her to test her limits did she agree, and that theatre experience, a slapstick comedy, helped her get over her initial inhibitions. “I thought this isn’t bad, I can do this, and then came the next experience, in a dark, serious play. Those exercises had a significant impact on me, I began thinking about why I was really doing theatre, am I laughing at the jokes I like, why am I sad, who am I pleasing, am I just pleasing other people, is it coming from a place of compassion, why am I scared to question things even when the other person is wrong.”Story continues below this adGrowing up, she was always encouraged to doubt and question. There were no dogmas. “My parents never forced me to do anything I didn’t want. They opened up spaces and facilitated my thinking. My father always used to say life is for living. He was an atheist, and I came to it on my own, after having gone to both the temple and the church. My mother spoke to me about love, romance and sexual abuse. Both of them said I could do whatever I wanted after 18; till then we would have discussions. They have shaped me slowly and surely,” she says.Also read – All We Imagine As Light: How to make it to CannesShe calls them by their first names: Maitreyan and Jayasree. “My father was a monk at an ashram where he met my mother. By then he was disenchanted with the gurukulam, and was gravitating towards communism and the Communist party. My mother never wanted to get married.” When they got together, they continued as they were, in a live-in relationship — two individuals who thought about things very differently. “When my mother changed her mind about not having a child, she told my father, it’s okay if you don’t want to, I’ll have anyone’s child, and my father thought, anyway I will have to bring up the child, so might as well have my own, so I came along,” she says, with a laugh.This awareness of life’s little absurdities is a running thread in our conversation. Kani was fascinated by philosophy, learnt Sanskrit, went to theatre school in Paris, and finally began taking on film roles as they gave her a chance to make the kind of money she wouldn’t be able to in theatre.Story continues below this adrKani Kusruti at home in Goa (Photo: Veepul Rege)She speaks of her early roles after her return from Paris with disinterest — the kind of films being made in Kerala at the time didn’t resonate with her. At this point, I find myself breaking in: So, what is her passion? What is it that floats her boat, which she seems to want to row to different shores?The answer is instant. “Science. I love science. I wanted to study maths and physics. Later, I loved biology even more. Then came the realisation that acting is also something I can do. I would love to be a doctor, but I turn 40 this year, and it is too late to go back and do everything from scratch. I love, love health care. When I was taking care of my grandmother in her last few months, I really enjoyed everything about it — giving her a bath, taking her to the toilet. I think I would be very happy working in palliative care,” she says.So when did this phase of saying yes to cinema begin? After 2013, Kani found that Malayalam films were getting “better”. “And then I met Anand (Gandhi, director of ‘Ship Of Theseus’), and we were dating, I came to Mumbai with him, but I didn’t like it. I didn’t speak Hindi, so I said no to the offers that came my way. I think in Malayalam, I read in Malayalam. If there is a definition of a regional actor, that is me. One role which I really liked was in the web-series ‘OK Computer’ (2021). It was whimsical, quirky, something I hadn’t done before. Then Covid happened, and we were here, in the house, locked down.”After a bit of prodding from Anand, Kani auditioned for ‘Maharani’ (2021-), a Sony Liv show, in which her character has to speak broken Hindi: her personal secretary to Huma Qureshi’s inexperienced chief minister soon caught our attention.Story continues below this adEven as we speak, Kani is mugging her lines for the fourth season of the series. Her Hindi may now be better than her French, she says, but she is still “as scared” when acting in the language. “I have humongous respect for actors who are more global. But I’m connected culturally only to Kerala,” she says, aware of the irony of her calling herself a regional actor whose journey has been decidedly global. Kani Kusruti at home in Goa (Photo: Veepul Rege)Which is, perhaps, why she felt so much at home doing Payal’s film, which mines her ability to reach deep into a character to bring up the truth: Prabha is one of the most authentic portrayals of a Malayali woman of her kind. “I used to spend time with the nurses at my mother’s clinic, they were like my didis. I don’t know if my portrayal of a nurse is authentic — only a nurse can say so — but I have known many women like Prabha.” All of that knowing, plus the director’s wanting a mix of real and not-so real, she’s poured into her Prabha, her contained resilience is both harrowing and heartbreaking.Both Payal and Shuchi describe Kani as being extremely collaborative. Payal calls her captivating. “I respect her so much and even if I don’t cast her, I will always consult her,” she says. Shuchi speaks of her having that rare quality of being able to reflect the multiple intentions that people carry within them.Kani says the two are very different in their approach — Payal sticks to pretty much what she wants, Shuchi is extremely open, can shoot two scenes diametrically opposite each other — but both respect process, a word she uses frequently to differentiate between the cinema she likes doing, and doesn’t. All three sound like a mutual admiration society.Story continues below this adKani and Anand are no longer together, she tells me, but he is still her closest friend with whom she can discuss everything. The house that Kani lives in, is also home to Anand and his partner (Shreya Dudheria, filmmaker and TV director), and another couple, Zain Memon, the creator of the popular board game Shasn, and his partner. The fivesome, if there’s such a word, work and play together. They are best friends, coming together when they need to, retreating to their corners when in need of privacy. “They have been teasing me, this is Kani’s era, and we’re just living in it, but I’m so bad at taking compliments, I keep wondering if all this praise is disproportionate. I think I’m just an average actor. If any of the fantastic actors I was surrounded by and grew up with get the same opportunities that I have, they too would do the same.”Read more – Lessons ‘All We Imagine as Light’ can teach BollywoodI ask her if it isn’t awkward for her to share the same space as Anand and his partner. “It did take us some time to understand how to transition but now we are close family,” she says. Her parents come and go — they have their own relationship with Anand, and just like her, they continue to remain close.So, is she living her best life? “Absolutely. I love being home,” she says, as she looks at the space around us, the westering sun reminding us of the passing time. By now, we have been chatting for a few hours, as she talks about her love for Goa. “Even when I was a child, whenever I came here, I used to say I want to live in Goa. It has the same geography as north Kerala, which I love. The same laterite soil, the same dense trees,” she says.Story continues below this adKani takes me out to the back porch, laden with creepers and plants, some of which she has planted. The entrance has a large jamun tree. A brown dog named Chinku lies under it. It’s his home, too. On the wall close to the door jamb, a moth has settled, its earthen colours matching with the surroundings. I show Kani a photo I took of the moth. She opens her photo gallery, and there’s a photo of the same moth: we laugh at the coincidence. But there’s also something completely right about it. She really is a creature in sync with her surroundings, at home in her world.