Mumbai, June 29 (PTI): Actor Vidya Balan on Wednesday said a lot of her earlier films emerged as box office hits but she wasn’t satisfied by playing the romantic interest opposite the male lead, a situation that changed for her when she was offered “Ishqiya”.
Balan made her Hindi film debut with “Parineeta” in 2005, and before “Ishqiya”, she played the female lead in films such as “Lage Raho Munna Bhai”, “Salaam-e-Ishq”, “Kismat Konnection”, and “Heyy Babyy”.
While there’s great talent in doing what “your quintessential Bollywood heroine” does with conviction, the 44-year-old said she couldn’t bring herself to do it. “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.
“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,” Balan told reporters here.
She was speaking at the release event of a new study on gender dynamics in the Hindi film industry. Titled ‘Lights, Camera, and Time for Action: Recasting Gender Equality Compliant Hindi Cinema’, the study was conducted by School of Media and Cultural Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (SMCS-TISS), Mumbai, through a grant from the US Consulate in Mumbai.
According to the study, the majority of leads and co-leads in box office hits are men, while women play the lead and co-lead characters in women-centric films. Women generally play the role of romantic co-lead or romantic interests in the box office hits, it added.
