At first sight, you might think she’s a stereotypical Siam Square girl. But Jeeja was chosen for the leading role in Chocolate, Prachya Pinkaew’s latest film, because she can fight. Here, the 23-year-old taekwondo teacher tells us about her transition to a movie star and the high expectations from Ong Bak’s fans.

Did you train a lot for the movie?
Yes. I dropped out of school for four years: two years for training and two more years for shooting. Even though I practice taekwando, I still had to learn muay thai, gymnastics and how to use weapons. The character likes watching action films—Jet Lee, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Tony Ja—and she is able to impersonate their martial arts styles based on the latest flick she’s seen.

You didn’t have a stunt double?
I played every scene myself. The worst blow I was dealt was after nights of shooting. I’m a girl, it was that time of the month and I was really tired. I didn’t see a foot coming and wham! I couldn’t open my left eye for a while and had to stop shooting for a week.

Is it difficult playing an autistic girl?
When I first knew I got this role, I thought it would be too hard for me to understand. I had no idea what an autistic person is like. The staff did research for me, brought me DVDs like Rain Man, Awakening and Forest Gump and medical study cases. I studied on my own for four to six months, had acting classes for a couple of months and observed children in a center for autistic persons. Their behaviors are all different, so I picked up on the eating habits of one, the walking of another, the way of expressing anger of yet another and so forth. It was a lot of pressure. I almost cried when I copied their actions. Like when one did his math homework, he would glance at the exercises once, then jot down all the answers without pausing to calculate anything.

What do you like most about this film?
I was very excited about acting with Off Pongpat. I’m a fan of his and he’s very professional when you work with him. He plays my enemy and when I first looked at him, I was really scared! Also, the last scenes were shot in Japan. It’s my first movie and I got to go abroad; I feel so lucky! Saransri Prawatpattanakul