Biography for
Esther (Character)
from Orphan (2009)

Esther (b. Leena Klammer) is a woman who could be defined as a violent and deluded psychopath. She is highly intelligent, highly manipulative, superficially charming when needed, and lacks remorse. She can easily induce fear, empathy, and even admiration (as we see during her first interaction with the Colemans) when it suits her ambitions. She has extreme talent in music and art, and is apparently able to learn languages very quickly. The choice of the name "Esther", which alludes to the Biblical figure who was once an orphan and became Queen of Persia, multiple mentions of heaven, and carrying her male victim's pictures around inside an old Bible suggests that she is somewhat influenced by Judeo-Christian concepts - though clearly not on moral level.

Esther suffers from a pituitary disorder that causes her to be a proportional dwarf. Because she is physically not quite a grown woman and not quite a child, it is hard for her to have an adult relationship with a "normal" man, which is one of the things she yearns for. She was sexually abused by her father from infancy, causing her to be sterile. Because this unnatural relationship was all Esther knew, it caused further difficulties in her search for a healthy relationship with a normal man. When her father took on a new sexual partner, he informed Esther that it was because she would "never be a real woman". She was pushed into insanity and killed both her father and his girlfriend. She was subsequently caught and eventually placed in a mental institution (the Saarne Institute).

Esther was one of Saarne's most violent patients, forcing the staff to keep her in a straitjacket that she was constantly fighting to get out of. Continued struggling against her restraints caused scarring on her wrists and neck. So, to cover these, she wears ribbons. She escaped the hospital and then continued to allow herself to be abused by becoming a prostitute for wealthy pedophiles. When arrested by the police in her prostitution, she kept up her child facade and was sent to an orphanage, where she tricked an American family into adopting her. Eventually, she tried to seduce the father, and when that failed, she killed him and his family and set fire to the house. The Coleman home is simply the newest place where Esther is continuing her efforts to find romantic/physical love in the only form she understands - a father figure.