Channel Guide Magazine
By: Jae-Ha Kim
Since 2001, Kristin Kreuk
has been famous for playing Lana Lang, the object of Clark Kent's teenage
desires on the television series Smallville. In the feature film Partition,
which premieres this month on Viewers Choice, Kreuk again plays a teenager.
But this time around, she portrays a 17-year-old Muslim girl who has fallen
in love with a Sikh - whose people are supposed to be enemies of her own."In
the West, we have certain misconception about Muslim women who wear the hijba
as victims," the Vancouver native told the Toronto Star. "But these
women don't feel they're repressed. In fact, they're so strong. ... [The film]
opened up a lot of avenues in my mind. ... Even though [the Partition] was
such a huge event, especially for that part of the world, we didn't study
it in school. It made me think, 'If I don't know this huge part of the worlds
history, how much more don't I know?' Knowing people's history helps to understand
them."
Kreuk researched the role by immersing herself into Vancouver's Muslim neighborhoods, visiting mosques and eating traditional biryani. The films title refers to the Partition of India which, in 1947, created the sovereign states Pakistan and India after they were granted independence from Great Britian.
Partition focuses on the unlikely love story between a soldier and a civilian, whose lives change, as Muslim-dominated Pakistan and Gindu-dominated India fight for power. When Gian (Jim Mistry), a Sikh, meets Naseem (Kreuk), a Muslim, he protects and eventually falls in love with her.
Kreuk told the news show
Canada AM that she got into acting almost by accident, but her decision to
tackle the role of Naseem was deliberate. "I felt like this story was
really important to me," she said. "I felt it would be a challenge
and test me in so many ways, and it was an opportunity to learn so much of
the world - the parts of life I hadn't experienced. I had made a lot of assumptions
from what we get in the press. I only hear negative stories, so I really wanted
to learn for myself and then try to represent a religion, as well as being
a woman in that environment, in the most honest, positive way."
That the role was 180 degrees different from her role on Smallville also was
a bonus. When she started on the show, she was an ingénue. Now, as
a seasoned actress, Kreuk is anxious to show off her range.
Kreuk, whose delicate beauty earned her a modeling contract representing Neutrogena, is different from many of the starlets du jour who find themselves going in and out of rehab and flitting from one boyfriend to another. She stays grounded by staying out of Hollywood and remaining in Canada. She also credits her parents for instilling her strong values and morals.
The daughter of a Dutch
father and an Indonesian Chinese mother - both landscape architects - Kreuk
was the proverbial good girl. She earned good grades in school, never caused
any problems and did whatever her parents asked of her. Asked to describe
herself, she told Rolling Stone magazine that she was "boring."
Hardly. A former gymnast and martial artist, Kreuk enjoyed acting in school
productions and planned on attending Simon Fraser University to study forensic
science or psychology.
On a whim in 2000, she auditioned for and won the role of Laurel on the CBC
teen series Edgemont. A year later, she was shooting that series while simultaneously
working on Smallville, which fortuitously enough was filmed in Vancouver as
well.
Most teenage girls would've jumped at the chance to play Lana Lang - and get the chance to lock lips with yummy Tom Welling, who plays Clark Kent. But Kreuk had her reservations when she read the initial description of Lana: a popular cheerleader dating the star quarterback.
"She seemed like an idiot," Kreuk said. But then she read the complete script for the pilot and changed her mind. Lana might be the pretty popular girl, but she also is dealing with the death of her parents and her unresolved feelings for Clark.
With the burgeoning film career and her seven-year contract on Smallville coming to an end, Kreuk isn't panicked. Rather she's excited about exploring what life has to offer, both professionally and personally. "I really enjoy traveling," she told Hollywood North Report. "Every chance I get, I take off somewhere and see the world. I find it puts my life in perspective. And if I feel like it, it's nice sometimes to just lie on a beach and chill out."
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