Vidya Balan recently spoke candidly at an event about her career, the roles she was initially offered, and much more.
Since making her Bollywood debut as Lalita in Parineeta in 2005, Vidya Balan has established herself as a force to be reckoned with. Since then, the actress has starred in films like Ishqiya, The Dirty Picture, Kahaani, Bhool Bhulaiya, and others and portrayed iconic characters. The actress confessed in a recent interview that she was unhappy with the early jobs that were presented to her and felt “like I was sleepwalking through those roles and films.”
The actress recently attended a launch event for a new study on gender dynamics in the Hindi film business called Lights, Camera, and Time for Action: Recasting Gender Equality Compliant Hindi Cinema. She engaged with the media while there and shared the reality she experienced.
I was playing the romantic interest in a lot of my earlier films, but it wasn’t satisfying, Vidya Balan admitted to the reporters present at the occasion stated above. I desired greater depth. Many of my films were quite successful commercially, so some of my neighbours asked me, “Do you want to upset the apple cart? Keep up the good effort; you’re getting results. Good work is very subjective, I reasoned.
Vidya Balan said, “I felt like I wasn’t contributing anything and felt like I was sleepwalking through those roles and films… ” Unhappy with what she was doing at the start of her Bollywood career. The character of a woman who owns her sexuality, your femme fatale and all of that, but there was a simmering strength in her, was offered to me at that point for the movie Ishqiya. When that was shown to me, I said, “Oh my god! I believed I was waiting for this.
Balan remembered how some people discouraged her from taking the role of Krishna, a cunning seductress, in Abhishek Chaubey’s Ishqiya, claiming that it was not a commercial movie. The actress said that playing the role was like being “reborn as an actor,” adding, “And I was like, whatever it is, I don’t care, I’m doing this picture. Additionally, I was told that it might be an art-house movie, which is a distinction I’ve never understood. I was unsure of my character’s identity in several flicks. They (the characters) lacked much definition.
Vidya Balan added, “Here, I felt that she was a living, breathing woman, with this deep desire for revenge and did not stop at anything. So, I thought, ‘Let’s see what this film does and then see what comes my way and if this is my so-called last film then so be it.’”
Vidya Balan’s most recent acting project was the Suresh Triveni thriller Jalsa, in which she played Maya Menon. She will appear in Anu Menon’s forthcoming mystery movie Neeyat as Mira Rao in her next performance. The movie, which also stars Ram Kapoor, Rahul Bose, Dipannita Sharma, Shashank Arora, and others, is set to hit theatres on July 7.
