Esther

Esther Coleman/Leena Klammer is the main character and antagonist in the movie The Orphan.

Biography
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

is apparently able to learn languages very quickly. The choice of the name "Esther", 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.

Leena 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. When her father took on a new sexual partner, he informed Leena 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). Eventually she managed to escape, then unknowingly continued to allow herself to be abused by becoming a prostitute for wealthy pedophiles 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 later moved on to the Colemans.

Leena 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 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. After this family, she was taken in by an American orphanage where she eventually met the Colemans. Leena is continuing her efforts to find romantic/physical love in the only form she understands - a father figure.

Becoming part of the Coleman family
Kate and John Coleman visit their local orphanage in an effort to help their family recover from hard times. It is here where they met "Esther". She easily charms them both and after some consideration they decided to adopt her. The Coleman's younger daughter Max who is deaf and communicates with sign language, embraces Esther almost immediately, their son Daniel (Jimmy Bennett) is somewhat less welcoming.

One night, Esther walks in on Kate and John having sex.The next day Kate tries to explain what happened and says that when parents love each other very much and Esther simply says "I know they fuck". This of course shocks Kate as Esther is displaying far more knowledge of sex and its slang than would be expected for a child her age. Kate wants to bring her to a therapist, Dr. Browning, but John doesn't want to make all that fuss about "one little dirty word."

Esther first day as school is not made easy for her as a classmate named Brenda teases Esther about her odd fashion. A few days later, Brenda once again teases Esther for carrying a bible to school and throws it and has some pages fall out of it. As Esther tries to quickly pick up the pages, Brenda notices the collar on her neck and tries to grab it and Esther freaks out and screams. A few days later Esther sees Brenda at the playground and pushes her off a playground slide, breaking Brenda's ankle. Max saw Esther shove the girl, but covers for Esther by saying that the girl slipped.

Sister Abigail ,the head of the orphanage, warns Kate and John about Esther's tendency to be around when things go wrong. Esther overhears this and later kills Sister Abigail by bludgeoning her with a hammer. She forces Max to help her hide the body and the hammer. Daniel sees Esther and Max descending from his treehouse from behind a rock, not knowing they hid the hammer there. Later that night, Esther threatens to cut Daniel's genitals off if he tells anyone what he saw.

Kate is later told that the Russian orphanage Esther came from has no record of her ever being there. Kate later finds Esther's bible and sees an inscription, declaring the bible property of the Saarne Institute. Confusing her even more, Kate finds out that Saarne is in Estonia, not Russia, as all of Esther's paperwork stated. Realizing that Kate is closer to figuring out her secret, Esther decides to torment Kate even more by picking flowers from Jessica's (Kate stillborn baby) grave. Kate grabs Esther's arm to get the flowers back and Esther runs off. Later that night Esther sneaks in John's work area, gets a vise and breaks her own arm and convinces John that Kate broke it. In the meantime, Kate discovers that Saarne is not an orphanage, but a mental institution.

Daniel learns of the hammer from Max and decides to get it and go to the police. However, Esther sets the treehouse on fire, intending to get rid of the evidence and kill Daniel. Daniel escapes by falling out of the tree, severely injuring his neck and knocking him unconscious. Esther tries to finish him off by smashing a rock over his head, but Max shoves her out of the way just in time. Esther again tries to kill him at the hospital by unhooking his respirator and attempting to smother him with a pillow, placing him in a near-fatal coma. Doctors rush into the room and manage to save Daniel. Outside, Kate angrily hits Esther, calling her a bitch, and is subdued and sedated by doctors. John leaves with Esther and Max to go home while Kate slumps into unconsciousness again.

That night, Esther tries to seduce a drunk and dazed John, who had drank Kate's last bottle of wine. John threatens to call the orphanage about her, telling her to stop her behavior and go to her room. Esther goes upstairs, holding back tears until she reaches her room, then submits to a deep heartbroken crying spell before losing her temper and tearing up her room in a rage. She also takes off all her makeup, her prosthetic dentures, bandages that cover her breasts, her collar and the ribbons on her wrists. Esther then dresses in all black with her hair tied back, without all the makeup she now looks aged. John goes up later to comfort her and discovers her disturbing artwork in her dark, now-ransacked and empty room; shortly thereafter the electricity is shut off. When he goes downstairs to investigate, Esther (who switched off the electricity) catches him from behind and stabs him several times. Then she spots Max watching at the top of the stairs. As the now-widowed Kate is coming out of sedation, she gets a call from the Saarne Institute's director, Dr. Värava, who reveals to her that Esther isn't a nine-year-old girl at all, but a thirty-three-year-old woman named Leena Klammer. She has hypopituitarism, a disorder that stunted her physical growth and has spent most of her life as a serial killer posing as a little girl.

When Kate gets home, she is finally pushed over the edge after discovering her husband dead. Kate goes looking for Max and in the process gets shot by Esther/Leena with the revolver she found in the house. Kate finally finds Max while she on top of the roof of their garden, which is made of glass. She breaks the glass and falls on top of Esther, who was trying to shoot Max. When Esther seemed unconscious Kate takes Max and runs away from the house. When the police arrive, Leena disappears. Leena runs after Kate, trying to kill her and Max with a knife. Their chase takes them to a frozen pond, where Kate and Leena struggle on the ice. Max grabs Leena's snubnosed revolver trying to shoot her, but misses, causing the ice to shatter. Leena and Kate fall into the freezing water. Kate crawls out of the hole, followed by Leena. Leena begs for her life and addressing Kate as her mother--while hiding a knife behind her back. Kate responds: "I'm not your fucking mommy!" and kicks Esther in the face, breaking her neck.

In an alternate ending on some DVD versions, there is no fight at the lake and Leena's neck is not broken. After Kate falls on Esther/Leena in the greenhouse and takes Max outside Leena goes back up to her room where she changes into her frilly dress and reapplies her "Esther" make-up, not quite hiding her bloody scars, all the while singing "The Story of Love". She comes downstairs to sweetly greet the police in the same manner as she did the Colemans. It is left up to the audience to decide what happens afterwards.

Death
Kate arrives back at her home, with the awful knowledge that Esther is a psychopathic killer, and is greeted with the gruesome sight of her husband shredded on the floor.Her daughter Max is still somewhere in the house, so she has no choice but to move on.Esther has armed herself with John's revolver, and after some stealthing around, she blasts Kate through the arm.''[Incidentally, during her fight with John, Esther has lost most of her makeup, and has also discarded her flawless false teeth (that's why she didn't want to go to the dentist earlier!) so now looks far less cute, as she is scarred and has disgusting, cracked, yellow teeth. This was either done to make her look more scary, or so that it doesn't upset Sensitive Mothers when they see Kate hitting her - but either way it is a mistake. Esther is by far at her most creepy when she looks like a nine year old.]''The chase scene moves outside where Kate sees Max beneath the roof of her botanical glass house. Kate is walking on the roof, so can't get to her, but signs frantically to the deaf girl to hide.This advice proves too late, and Esther looms into view, beheading the toddler with a pair of shears. Well no, that doesn't really happen, the cute kid is of course invulnerable, and Kate saves her by smashing through the glass house roof and squashing Esther to the floor. They retrieve the gun and then succumb to the oldest horror cliche there is - they just walk off and leave her, assuming she is dead.Of course this means we'll get another action scene in a moment or so, so why am I complaining? Well really just because the rest of the film was good enough that it deserved a more original ending.What we get though is Mummy Coleman grappling with a knife wielding Esther over an icy lake. Mom gets slashed to ribbons, but Max saves the day by awkwardly pointing the revolver in both of her tiny hands and shooting willdy at Esther. She misses of course, but the bullet cracks the ice, dunking both women into the frigid water. Esther is still stabbing away, but Kate gets to the surface first and hauls herself onto the ice. Esther surfaces beneath her, almost frozen, and falls back on her charm to save the day."Please, mommy. Don't let me die" she pleads with an uncharacteristic lack of guile.Kate's reaction is more in character:"I'm not your f*cking mommy!" She then push kicks her shoe with full force underneath Esther's chin, quite possibly breaking her neck. Whether she does or not is moot - Esther sinks into the lake and the nightmare is at an end (well, not really, as Kate is now the lone parent of two seriously messed up kids!)