Actor Vidya Balan has opened up about the initial days of her career and how the films that worked the least, were the ones with male heroes. The 43-year-old said that “Initially, I was made to feel like I was making unconventional choices."
"In every promotional interview, I get asked, ‘Oh, you're doing another unconventional film?’ Now, I think there are too many unconventional roles that it's become conventional. But I think, at some stage, I wondered if I needed to reconsider. I had a spate of successes followed by a spate of films that didn't do well. While I don't really pay attention to what people have to say, but I was wondering if I needed to reconsider my decisions," she told India Today.
Vidya, who made her Bollywood debut with 'Parineeta' (2005), went on doing films like 'Lage Raho Munna Bhai' and 'Guru' (2006), 'Heyy Babyy', 'Bhool Bhulaiyaa' (2007), 'Kismat Konnection' (2008), and 'Paa' (2009). She also featured in 'Ishqiya' and 'No One Killed Jessica' (2010), 'The Dirty Picture' (2011), 'Kahaani' (2012), 'Kahaani 2' (2016), 'Begum Jaan' and 'Tumhari Sulu' (2017), 'Mission Mangal' (2019), 'Shakuntala Devi' (2020), 'Sherni' (2021) among many others.
The actor received a National Film Award for her performance in 'The Dirty Picture'. She was also awarded the Padma Shri.
The actor said that she wondered if she had to look at a different kind of film. "Maybe I wasn't seeing success because I wasn't doing the ‘so-called’ conventional films. But amongst all the films that I did, and the ones that didn't work, the ones that weren’t female-centric films performed the worst. I had a spate of seven duds. It breaks my heart to call them flops, but I had seven films that didn't work."
"So, amongst those, the two films that worked the least were the ones with male heroes. So, I told myself there's no, there's no math to this. It's about a good film. In my head, I made that note, decided that I should just be authentic and continue to make these choices,” she added.
The actor was last seen in 'Jalsa' and her next is 'Neeyat' .
