As actress Lorcia Cooper-Khumalo reflects and celebrates her 22 years in the industry this year, she remains firm that the impact she has had on people is more important to her than the highest acting accolade she's ever received in the industry. 

She started out with zero-acting training on Backstage in 2000, a popular youth soap in SA at the time, as one of the  performance arts students at Vulindlela College in downtown Joburg.

The show, which was shot from 2000 until 2007, followed trials and tribulations of youths who wanted to make it into the arts industry.

At the time, Cooper-Khumalo was also learning her way into the industry as she did not have a formal training to speak of and had to rely on the training she was getting from the set and her peers. She had to quickly adapt, a trait that has made her one of the household names in the film business. 

So while putting aside that intimidating feeling and unreservedly committing to the task at hand, looking always to evolve, Cooper-Khumalo has managed to successfully build an impressive acting career that earned her a Safta award in 2009.   

An honour that she has faithfully laboured for over the past years leading up to her impactful character of Tyson on Mzansi Magic’s Lockdown.

"First of all, being nominated and then winning was such an incredible honour and acknowledgment. But the real highlights for me were my peers acknowledging me, standing and clapping. That took my breath away. There’s no win that feels quite like that, I get goosebumps even imagining it right now. 

“Even more than that, my kids were on stage to see it,” she said. “I’d like to think that I am among those who continue to find ways to be even better, to not just lay on the last performance they had but I intend to do even better work each time,” she said.

And that is the intention she carries with while making a return on e.tv’s Scandal! screens as Erin Martins, to tell this storyline with the newness, sincerity and compassion that it deserves, she shares.

She returns to her character at the crossroads of motherhood, where her adopted daughter Motshabi went out to look for her biological mother Dintle Nyathi, while she made it clear that Nyathi must not make contact with her.

“So you (always) want to be able to tell a story that represents whoever is in that situation as beautifully and truthfully as possible, and with as much honour as possible. For me always going into any storyline, I always ask how do I honour it and how do I allow for thoughts after someone watches it? I honestly believe that we have the power as artists to always transcend people and that is always my intention with my art, to take people somewhere.

“I like to do work that has integrity, to have meaning, to have depth and for me to be able to look at it and go ‘I felt something there’.”

Returning to Scandal!’s screens, she expressed, was a blatant reminder how much time has passed and how things changed. 

“A lot has changed in 10 years. When I left there, Dintle was a teenage girl herself, as well as the character Lindiwe. And now in the story, these people are married and Dintle has her own kid. I’m just like ‘what is this’? If anything, it definitely shows age and time are constantly moving.”   

Cooper-Khumalo also revealed that she is deliberate about which roles she accepts, and how she would turn down roles even when she had no work, “because I don’t want to lie about who I am and what I represent". "I don’t want to sell my soul for a paycheck,” she emphasised her point.

In the two decades of being in the limelight, Cooper-Khumalo has managed to maintain a private life, with the strong belief that while her work is the only aspect of her life that belongs to the audience while her life and family don’t. 

Being on Somizi Mhlongo’s reality TV show, therefore, was more than just a fun thrill.  “I went to reality TV to have a conversation with him because for me, it was really about holding my friend accountable and asking the question that everyone wanted the answer to. And not being afraid to know the truth about someone who loves,” describing their friendship as being like siblings. 

“I get Somizi, I get him. I met Somizi around the time when I met Lebo Mathosa. It’s been many years. Somizi and I don’t have a public display relationship. Whatever friendship I have, my marriage, my kids, all of that... belongs to me.”

When she is not acting or being a supermom, Cooper-Khumalo says she binges on Korean series on Netflix. “I am super-obsessed with those,” she said laughing. 

After all has been said and done, all she wants to do is to be an impactful human being in people’s lives. “I just want to do great work, that’s all. Keep the frills, keep the diamonds, keep the feather, keep the pretence; I just want to do great work and that is what my heart is about.

"That’s what I yearn for. I am proud of myself and I think there is more. I am proud of who I have grown into. I believe that who you are is as important as what you do. You can be talented and be a horrible person. I am proud of who I have become and who I continue to become. I also want to be remembered for being an amazing human.

"At my funeral please don’t come to put a Safta award and talk about what I won. No, talk about who I was and how I’ve impacted you.”