In Full Bloom | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

It was the stare that always got you. The bold, direct, Cleopatran stare of a woman who knows that she holds the reins simply because she's very comfortable in her own skin. In the '80s, her fame came from posing for sultry, eroticised photos that steamed up the rooms of men, young and old. Now Penpak Sirikul is 51. She has a 30-year-old son. She has no beau at the moment ("I won't hide, I never hide"). But she stares you down and disembowels you with her smouldering, black-widow heat. Look closely, boys: even now, Penpak doesn't do seduction. She is seduction.

Penpak Sirikul, one of Thailand’s best-known models, plays a transgender in the film It Gets Better . ‘It’s the most liberating role I’ve got,’ she says.

On screen, she infused that luxuriant sensuality into a lot of movies over the past 30 years. Only recently Penpak proved yet again that she still has what it takes to be a leading lady, this at an age when most actresses find their career prospects limited to playing doting mothers. That commanding presence, plus the ease with which she inhabits her body has led to Penpak being re-discovered by young film-makers as a channel for expressing fluid sexuality. The proof is to be found in her next two films: In Mai Dai Kor Hai Ma Rak (It Gets Better), which opens on February 14, she plays a post-operative, male to female transsexual. And in She, slated for a mid-year roll-out, Penpak plays a lesbian; the photo of her kissing a younger woman has already got tongues wagging in the pre-release grapevine.