Sharifah Amani binti Syed Zainal Rashid Al-Yahya, better known by her stage nameSharifah Amani, is a Malaysian actress. She is the best known for her role as Orked in the films of Sepet and Gubra.
Biography
She is the second daughter of veteran Malaysian actress, Fatimah Abu Bakar. Sharifah is of Malay-Chinese-Arab-Bengali parentage and speaks fluent English, Malay and some Hindi. As a teenage writer for the New Straits Times YouthQuake slot, Amani covered assignments like the Shah Rukh Khan and Juhi Chawla press conference, concerts by Bollywood stars, Deep Purple and the 3rd IIFA Awards in Genting Highlands. Sharifah has also dabbled in theatre, having acted as Ophelia in the Bangsar Actors Studio's Hamlet, directed by Faridah Merican.
Career
Film
She is most famous for portraying the character Orked in Yasmin Ahmad's Orked trilogy. The first two films are Sepet and Gubra. In the latest instalment, Mukhsin, Sharifah Amani plays the adult version of Orked who "meets" her 10-year-old self. She previously played the supporting role as a sexually abused teenager in the film Gol & Gincu. She co-stars in the Malaysian film, Cinta, where she is one of ten actors playing 5 different couples portraying different situations based on the theme of love and relationships. Her mother co-stars with her in this movie. In the Cantonese Malaysian horror movie, Possessed, she plays a supporting role as Fara, the assistant and close friend of a Chinese girl, Lisu, who migrated to Malaysia to make it big as a singer. Unfortunately, Lisu is brutally murdered and Fara, as the only witness of the murder, goes insane and is committed to a mental asylum. She is the main cast in Muallaf, where she acts with Sharifah Aleysha, another one of her younger sisters. This film is also directed by Yasmin Ahmad. To fulfill her role in the movie, she shaved her head bald because in one of the scenes in the movie her character's head is shaved by the father for being too 'wild'.
Television
Following the relative success of Gol & Gincu in the supporting role as a sexually abused teenager, she reprises this role later in several guest appearances in the TV series based on the movie, as originally broadcast in 2006 on the Malaysian TV channel, 8TV. In 2006, she also hosted a make-over TV show on NTV7 with her elder sister, Sharifah Aleya. In March 2007, TV3 has started broadcasting the dramedy series Emil Emilda in their Samarinda timeslot, starring Sharifah Amani as the lead role of Emilda. She stars in title role of Emilda, a bespectacled geeky filing clerk working in a fictitious TV station, where she catches the attention of the CEO due to her hard-working nature and passion for the broadcasting industry. The CEO finds out his long-lost son, Emil/Boboi who has been missing following a car accident 20 years ago has been sighted. En route to follow up on the information regarding his son, he dies when his private helicopter crashes. It is then revealed in his will that he has chosen Emilda to be his temporary replacement as CEO until his son can be located to be his rightful heir.
Controversy
In 2006 at the 19thMalaysian Film Festival, when accepting her award as Best Actress she said "I sound, like, stupid, if I speak Malay, so I'll speak English". This statement had been interpreted by some parties as if Sharifah was ridiculing the Malay language when she had meant that she was not really fluent in it. She later claimed that she was misquoted when her statement was translated by the Malay media.
