CELEBRITY

By Pravin Nair

5 November 2024

Sofia Jane’s—Second—Coming of Age

She puts the I in Sofia.

CELEBRITY

Sofia Jane’s—Second—Coming of Age

By Pravin Nair

She puts the I in Sofia.

The night before was not necessarily gruesome for her. Sofia Jane had just wrapped up a television series that she’d been filming for some time now. Now, she sits in front of me with a lunch wrap in hand, hair slicked back with gel. Theatrics are at play. I will also come to understand her appreciation and adoration for the performing arts. The day was already approaching an end–I could feel the sun falling back behind dark storm clouds. Then, like the crack of thunder, her voice brings me back to reality. On a wooden bench far, far away from the city centre, we both sit across one another, getting acquainted. I am giddy with the anticipation of the answers she might give. I hope for her sake, the interview is bearable. She is, after all, Malaysia’s most seasoned, and renowned actress.

“Make sure my name is spelled with an ‘F-I-A’. Many reporters and journalists tend to spell it with an ‘F-E-A’ even after I correct them,” Sofia asks politely between bites. “I don’t know how the error started”, she explains immediately. Her firm, quiet demeanour is piercing, her voice sharp and concise. When she speaks, one should do nothing but listen. When she is done, only then, you volley. I suppose years and years of experience have gifted her great tenacity when speaking and sharing bits and pieces of her reality. Having garnered profound recognition in the film and television spaces in Malaysia, Sofia Jane is not an unfamiliar name to any consumer of media – especially not to someone like me, ironically, a person so far removed from the local film and TV scene.

Sofia Jane’s name would be one that would pierce my threshold of reality again and again. It started when I interviewed her daughter last year. Life has a way of imbuing things around you, connecting one dot to the other until you have a whole picture. “Have you watched the trailer for Maryam?” a friend asked me sometime early this year. It wasn’t curiosity that led me to watch the trailer. It was the trailblazer herself—Sofia Jane. “I found myself doing a lot more work in the last two years. Hopefully, these films come out in the cinemas in 2025. Then there was ‘One Cent Thief’, which I filmed with Astro. I just finished filming the second season yesterday”, she exclaims with a smile. The tides are changing for Sofia and her contemporaries. “The tables are turning now. Many of my counterparts in the industry are getting more interesting work”.

Prior to the shift in the zeitgeist, the film and television was a brutal one. This was especially apparent for seasoned, established women actors of a certain age. The older one got, the more perplexing their acting lives became. Two choices were usually given; one choice had to be made. They were to either face the scrutiny of typecasting, or they would be out of a job. “It’s refreshing to see writers and directors expressing and acting on this interest in working with actors who are in their 50s, 60s, and 70s”, she explains. Older female actors are now getting refreshing roles—ones where they are not being pigeonholed into. Jane is hopeful of the momentum, explaining that there is so much talent still waiting to be explored in front of the camera for her and her peers.

Preoccupied as she is on set and with her home life as a mother and a wife, she shares what she does for fun in such a candid manner, that I couldn’t help but reconfirm her answer.

“Fun is when I’m on set. That’s my me time”.

“Really?” I ask her in disbelief. “Yeah!”, she answers immediately. She paints a picture of her life, one where her kids are grown up and not necessarily in need of her constant attention. Early in her career—when she was cast in many advertisements, TV shows, and films, gaining notability in the industry for her talent—Sofia thought it best to remove herself from the limelight. This is something that she still does, remaining out of sight of fans and the media while being in public.

At the time, her husband was presented with an opportunity to relocate to Indonesia, and she said yes to the idea without hesitation. “I was just coming into myself, coming into my career. This was around the time that I’d just gotten married. When my husband told me that he received a job offer to move to Jakarta, I said yes. I wanted normalcy in having a married life and a family. I couldn’t have done that in KL”. Years after, when Sofia and her family had returned to Kuala Lumpur, the actress reintegrated herself into the acting scene once more, citing her homecoming to be a refreshing one.

When she returned to the acting scene after her torpor, there were new, fresh faces on screen. It was grounding to know that life carries on, and it was even more so grounding for her to be fresh off the boat once again. “I’m not out there enough, and people tend to build ideas about you because they don’t know who you are. I am comfortable in not sharing my life online. In my youth, I had a bad habit of only working with friends. I’m scrapping that now and re-learning what I know. I like to remain private, but I’m also making an active effort to get to know more people again. It’s like a coming of age; I have one every ten years”.

When she began her career in front of the camera, Sofia Jane was 18 years old. She is now 52 years old. So much has transpired in the time between. “As you get older, you have the time to reflect on the things that you engage in—in my case, it’s the practice that I do. It’s liberating to be offered roles, interesting roles at my age. But it’s also very liberating to be mindful in choosing what comes my way”, she affirms.