Vidya Balan Agrees To Sleepwalking In Her Earlier Films, Exposing The Reality Says “I Was Playing The Romantic Interest…”

Vidya Balan has been a force to be reckoned with ever since she debuted in Bollywood in 2005 as Lalita in Parineeta. Since then, the actress has played unforgettable roles in films like Ishqiya, The Dirty Picture, Kahaani, Bhool Bhulaiyaa and more. In a recent chat, the actress revealed she was unsatisfied with the parts offered at the start of her career and felt “like I was sleepwalking through those roles and films.”

The actress recently attended an event to launch Lights, Camera, and Time for Action: Recasting Gender Equality Compliant Hindi Cinema – a new study on gender dynamics in the Hindi film industry. While there, she interacted with the press and exposed the reality she faced. Read on.

As reported by Indian Express, at the above-mentioned event, Vidya Balan got candid about her career and told the reporters present, “I was playing the romantic interest in a lot of my earlier films, but it wasn’t satisfying. I wanted more substance. A lot of my films worked very well commercially, so some people around me said, ‘Do you want to topple the apple cart? You’re getting good work, continue to do it.’ I thought, good work is very subjective.”

Unhappy with what she was doing during the initial phase of her Bollywood career, Vidya Balan continued, “I felt like I wasn’t contributing anything and felt like I was sleepwalking through those roles and films… At that point, I was offered a film called Ishqiya, the role of a woman who owns her sexuality, your femme fatale and all of that, but there was a simmering strength in her. When I was offered that, I thought, ‘Oh my god! This is what I thought I was waiting for.”

Recalling playing Krishna – a scheming seductress, in Abhishek Chaubey’s Ishqiya, Balan recalled some people discouraging her from doing it, saying it was not a commercial film. Calling the part something that made her feel “reborn as an actor,” the actress stated, “And I was like, whatever it is, I don’t care, I’m doing this film. I was also told that maybe it’s an art-house film, and that’s a distinction I’ve never understood… In some films, I didn’t know who I had played. They (characters) were not that well defined.”

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.’”

On the work front, Vidya Balan was last seen as Maya Menon in the Suresh Triveni thriller Jalsa. Her next outing will see her play Mira Rao in Anu Menon’s upcoming mystery film Neeyat. Also starring Ram Kapoor, Rahul Bose, Dipannita Sharma, Shashank Arora, and more, the film is scheduled to release theatrically on July 7.

Stay tuned to Koimoi for more.

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