‘She’s the queen’: Sri Lanka bids farewell to film legend Malini Fonseka

Sri Lankan actress Malini Fonseka awarded during the Deauville film festival on March 5, 2014 in Deauville, France. Fonseka died in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on May 24, 2025 [FILE: Dominique Charriau/WireImage via Getty]

Colombo, Sri Lanka — As a girl, when Srimathi Mallika Kaluarachchi would go to the cinema with her family, and a man on the screen would hit the character played by superstar Malini Fonseka, Kaluarachchi would cry.

Then she would turn to her father in desperation. “We used to scream at the screen, telling our father to save her,” Kaluarachchi, now 68, recalled. “That was how much we loved her.”