Lakshmy grooms her actors to perform with subtlety: Piaa Bajpai

Chennai: Actress Piaa Bajpai is gung-ho about being part of actor-filmmaker Lakshmy Ramakrishnan`s Tamil actioner `Nerungi Va Muthamidathe`. She says Lakshmy encourages her actors to not act but perform with subtlety."Lakshmy likes subtle acting and she grooms her actors to follow that. Most actors don`t react the same way to a scene on and off the screen. If they genuinely try to do that, that`s called overacting. But Lakshmy never asks her actors to act, she wants them to be natural, Piaa told reporters.

"She wants her actors to react how they will respond to a situation in real life. I found it a little awkward initially but I`ve started to really enjoy it," she said. Piaa says that Lakshmy also prefers her actors to act sans make-up. "I think because she wants us to act subtly, she`s asked me to act without make-up and wear very simple costumes. She focuses only on the performances of her actors," she added. "Nerungi Va Muthamidathe" is Lakshmy`s second directorial after the critically acclaimed "Aarohanam". The film also stars Viji Chandrasekhar, who plays Piaa`s mother in it. Piaa enjoyed working with Viji and was touched when she said she wants her daughter to be like her. "Although Viji plays my mother, we`ve become good friends and we spend a lot of time together on the sets. She told me that she likes how independent I`m in life and the struggle I`ve gone through to be an actor. She told me she doesn`t mind her daughter to be like me," she said. "I didn`t react but I knew she meant it because she`s mature and wouldn`t say these things for the sake of it. Nobody has ever told me that they want their children to be like me. Coming from Viji, this was a huge compliment for me," Piaa added. Piaa, who has already completed shooting the first schedule of the film, finds Lakshmy to be a strong woman. "Ours is a male-dominated industry. When you do something good, people say maybe luck and time was in your favour. When you do it the second time, some are waiting to find out what you`ve done and others want to pull you down. But these things won`t bother Lakshmy because she`s very strong and she knows she has to prove herself again," she said. Produced by A.V. Anoop, the film also features Shruti Hariharan of "Lucia" fame.