Amala Paul says she quit films because she was ‘exhausted, burned out’: I didn’t have the energy to do movies

In 2019, Amala Paul stunned her fans by taking a sabbatical from films while she was at the peak of her career. She had just seen the release of her solo lead film Aadai and just a year earlier, had worked in hits like Ratsasan and Thiruttu Payale 2. Despite that, she took a break from films and returned only in 2021. In a recent interview, the actor said she felt ‘exhausted’ and had no energy left to work in films. Also read: Amala Paul says Telugu films have actresses for just love scenes, songs

Amala made her debut in films at the age of 17 with the Malayalam film Neelathamara. It was with the Tamil film Mynaa in 2010 that she first tasted success. Over the next decade, she worked in 32 films before she took a break in 2019.

In a recent interview with ETimes, she explained her decision and said, “I didn’t want to quit film because my films were not doing fine or that I was not getting any offers. I got the biggest offers of my career at that point in time but I had to say no, because I simply needed a break. I was tired, exhausted, burned out. I started in the industry when I was 17 and now I’m 30. So, you know, it’s almost 13 years of no break at all. And then I went through my personal loss, losing my father, then the pandemic happened and suddenly I was at home and I didn’t have anything to do. There were no flights to catch, meetings to attend or characters to work on. And that gave me a lot of time to connect with myself, process my emotions, my journey and my life. And I sort of realised that I was not very happy with the person that I was becoming. I felt like I was carrying too much baggage and that break phase was very cleansing for me. I call it my washing machine phase. I was literally going through so much detox and healing. I didn’t have the energy to do movies.”

While Amala was confident she needed the break, her family was worried that she might be ‘forgotten’ due to time away from the limelight. “When I discussed that with my family, they were like, normally nobody takes a break. If you’re taking a break, then you could be forgotten. But that was not a concern for me because I was prioritising my need to rest,” she said.

In the end, Amala returned in 2021 with two anthology films– Kutty Story in Tamil and Pitta Kathalu in Telugu. She also made her OTT debut in 2021 with the Aha series Kudi Yedamaithe and her Hindi debut in the Voot series Ranjish Hi Sahi. Amala was last seen in the Tamil thriller Cadaver, which was released on Disney+ Hotstar last month and opened to mixed reviews. She currently has three Malayalam films–Teacher, Christopher, and Aadujeevitham–in the pipeline.

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