In a tell-all interview, Vidya Balan shares her brush with casting couch, when she was 'thrown out' of a film and all the times she's faced rejections before becoming a top Bollywood actress...
One of the top actresses in the industry today, Vidya Balan is fresh off the success of her latest release - Mission Mangal. The actress, who made her acting debut with Bhalo Theko (2003), recently opened up about her horrific experiences with producers and directors while she was trying to find a foot in the South film industry.
Vidya Balan also made candid confessions about her brush with the casting couch, when she was humiliated and 'thrown out' of a film after she shot for it and the kind of rejections she had to face before she got her big Bollywood break in Parineeta (2005).
Here's the full story:
1. 'He kept insisting that we should go to the room'
)
In a tell-all interview with Pinkvilla, Vidya Balan shared how one of the directors kept on insisting that they should go to her room to discuss the project. "One day I remember I was in Chennai and this director came to meet me. I said let's sit in the coffee shop and he kept insisting that he wants to talk to me and that we should go to the room. I left the door of my room open and he left within five minutes," Vidya told the entertainment portal.
(File Photo)
2. "The producer said 'just look at her does she look like a heroine'?"
)
The actress also narrated an incident when a producer replaced her in his film and gave a humiliating excuse to her parents which had a lasting impact on her. "There was a Tamil film I was doing and I was thrown out of the film...I remember my parents had come with me because they were so worried about me...I had really begun to fade so my both the parents flew to Chennai with me and we went to the producer's office. The producer showed us the clippings from the film and he said 'just look at her does she look like a heroine'."
"He said 'I was not in favour of taking her at all, it was the director who insisted.' I felt ugly. I felt like shit for months and I don't think I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn't like what I saw because I thought I was ugly. For the longest time I had not forgiven that man but today, thanks to that I realized that I have to love and accept myself the way I am," she further shared.
(Image via Yogen Shah)
3. When Vidya was slapped with a legal notice on opting out of a film with objectionable content
)
During the course of her conversation, Vidya also revealed that she was slapped with a legal notice for opting out of a Tamil film after shooting for it for a day, as she was not comfortable with the lines and the content of the film.
(Image via Yogen Shah)
4. Every cloud has a silver lining!
)
Thankfully, just as every cloud has a silver lining, Vidya's horrifying experiences before she made her acting debut in Bhalo Theko and then her first Bollywood film Parineeta earned her tons of applauds. The actress has also won a National Award for her commendable performance in the film - The Dirty Picture.
(Image via Yogen Shah)
