Esther Coleman

Esther Coleman/Leena Klammer was the main character and villain in the movie, Orphan. She was portrayed by Isabelle Fuhrman.

Biography
Leena suffered from a pituitary disorder that caused her to be a proportional dwarf. Because she was physically not quite a grown woman and not quite a child, it was hard for her to have an adult relationship with a "Normal" man which was one of the things that she yearned for. She was sexually abused by her father from infancy. When her father took a new sexual partner on, he informed Leena that it was because she would "Never be a real woman". She was pushed into insanity and killed her father and his girlfriend. She was subsequently caught and eventually placed in a mental institution which was the Saarne Institute. Eventually, she managed to escape and unknowingly continued to allow herself to be abused by becoming a prostitute for years. When the police caught her, she pretended to be a child to avoid jail time and was sent to the orphanage where she found her first family of victims and moved on to the Colemans.

Leena was one of the Saarne's most violent patients by forcing the staff to keep her in a straightjacket that she was constantly fighting to get out of. She continued struggling against her restraints and it caused the scars on her wrists and neck. So, to cover these, she wore the ribbons. She escaped from the hospital and tricked an American family that was called the Sullivans 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. After this, she was taken in by an American orphanage where she eventually met the Colemans. Leena was continuing her efforts to find romantic/physical love in the only form that she understood which was a father figure.

Becoming part of the Coleman Family
Kate and John Coleman visited their local orphanage in an effort to help their family recover from losing a baby. It was here that they met "Esther". She easily charmed them and after some consideration, they decided to adopt her. The Coleman's younger daughter named Max who was deaf and communicated with sign language embraced Esther almost immediately, but their son named Daniel was less welcoming.

One night, Esther walked in on Kate and John who are having sex. On the next day, Kate tried to explain what happened by beginning to say that it was what happened when the parents loved each other very much and Esther simply said, "I knew. They fucked". This shocked Kate as Esther was displaying far more knowledge about sex and it's slang than it would be expected for a child that was her age. Kate wanted to bring her to a therapist named Dr. Browning, but John did not want to make all of that fuss about "One little dirty word."

Esther's first day at school was not easy for her as a classmate named Brenda teased Esther about her odd clothes. A few days later, Brenda teased Esther once again for carrying a Bible to school and threw it and had some pages fall out of it. As Esther tried to quickly pick the pages up, Brenda noticed the ribbon on her neck and tried to grab it. Esther freaked out and screamed. Later, Esther saw Brenda at the playground and pushed her off a slide by breaking Brenda's ankle. Max saw Esther shove the girl, but covered for Esther by saying that the girl slipped.

Sister Abigail who was the head of the orphanage warned Kate and John about Esther's tendency to be around when things went wrong. Esther overheard this and killed Sister Abigail by bludgeoning her with a hammer. She forced Max to help her hide the body and the hammer. Daniel saw Esther and Max descending from his treehouse from behind a rock not knowing that they hid the hammer there. Later on that night, Esther threatened to cut Daniel's genitals off if he told anyone what he saw.

Kate was told that the Russian orphanage that Esther came from had no records about her ever being there. Searching her room, Kate found Esther's Bible and saw an inscription by declaring that the book was the property of the Saarne Institute. Confusing her even more, Kate found out that Saarne was in Estonia, not Russia as all of Esther's paperwork stated. Realizing that Kate was closer to figuring her secret out, Esther decided to torment Kate even more by picking the flowers from Jessica's (Kate's stillborn daughter) grave. Kate grabbed Esther's arm to get the flowers back and Esther ran away with a scream. Later on that night, Esther snuck into John's work area, broke her own arm in a vase and convinced John that Kate broke it. In the meantime, Kate discovered that Saarne was not an orphanage, but a mental institution.

Daniel learned about the hammer from Max and decided to get it and go to the police. However, Esther setted the treehouse on fire by intending to get rid of the evidence and kill Daniel. Daniel escaped by falling out of the tree by severely injuring his neck and knocking him unconscious. Esther tried to finish him off by smashing a rock over his head, but Max shoved her out of the way just in time. Esther tried to kill him again at the hospital by unhooking his respirator and attempting to smother him with a pillow by placing him in a near-fatal coma. The doctors rushed into the room and managed to save Daniel. Outside, Kate angrily hitted Esther by calling her a bitch and was subdued and sedated by the doctors. John left with Esther and Max to go home while Kate slumped into unconsciousness again.

On that night, Esther tried to seduce a drunk and dazed John who finally realized that Kate was right to be suspicious about her. John threatened to call the orphanage about her and told her to stop her behavior and go to her room. Esther went upstairs by holding her tears back until she reached her room and was submitted to a deep and heartbroken crying spell before losing her temper and tearing her room up in a rage. She also took all of her makeup, her prosthetic dentures, the bandages that covered her breasts, her collar and the ribbons on her wrists and neck off. Esther was dressed in black with her hair tied back. Without all of the makeup, she looked aged. John went up to comfort her and discovered her disturbing artwork in her dark, now-ransacked and empty room. Shortly after, the electricity was shutted off. When he went downstairs to investigate, Esther caught him from behind and stabbed him several times. Then, she spotted Max who was watching at the top of the stairs.

As the now-widowed Kate was coming out of sedation, she got a call from the Saarne Institute's director named Dr. Värava who revealed to her that Esther was not a 9 year old girl at all, but a 33 year old woman named Leena Klammer. She had hypopituitarism which was a disorder that stunted her physical growth and spent most of her life as a serial killer by posing as a little girl.

When Kate got home, she was finally pushed over the edge after discovering her husband dead. Kate went looking for Max and got shot by Leena with the revolver that she found in the house in the process. Kate finally found Max in the greenhouse while she peered down from the roof. She broke the glass and fell on top of Esther just before she could shoot Max. When Esther appeared unconscious, Kate took Max and ran away from the house. Leena ran after Kate by trying to kill her and Max with a knife. Their chase took them to a frozen pond where Kate and Leena struggled on the ice. Max grabbed Leena's snub-nosed revolver and tried to shoot her, but missed by causing the ice to shatter. Leena and Kate fell into the freezing water. Kate crawled out of the hole and was followed by Leena. Leena begged for her life and addressing Kate as her mother while hiding a knife behind her back. Kate responded: "I am not your fucking Mommy!" and kicked Esther in the face, breaking her neck.



Victims

 * Unknown father.
 * Her father's girlfriend.
 * The Sullivans.
 * Yolanda (A girl that John and Kate are going to adopt before Esther in the early draft of the script, not included in the film).
 * Sister Abigail.
 * John Coleman.
 * Daniel, Kate And Max (In the early draft of the script, she succeeded in killing him). Though she doesn't directly in either draft, knowing how badly Max and Kate are damaged, Kate is certain to have taken hers and Max's lives eventually in said early draft.

Trivia

 * A huge amount of Esther's backstory was omitted from the film. The background was still in the script version of the movie which also had Esther killing a girl named Yolanda and successfully killing Daniel and John and attempting to kill Max and Kate but was ultimately shot by Kate. Knowing their mental damages from Leena though, Kate certainly eventually took her life post taking Max's in early draft.