Launched by the Yash Raj banner in a film directed by Aditya Chopra opposite Bollywood's baadshah Shah Rukh Khan, Anushka's Bollywood debut was absolutely surreal. However, while it all sounds like a fairy tale, Sharma has had her own share of rejections.
She recently opened up about them and revealed, “I have faced rejection from the age of 15. I don’t talk about it because there’s no need to do that. But, I was constantly getting dropped from shows, picked for an ad and then would get replaced. All that has happened to me, too. Obviously, all that is also an integral part of the industry and life in general. But to experience that at the tender age of 15, to be subjected and be judged purely on the basis of how you look, it can be very mentally damaging as well. It hits your self-esteem. I have dealt with it.”
(Also check out: Outsiders who made grand Bollywood debuts)However, she never talks about this side of her story. “I don’t want to sit and make things into a sob story unless someone asks me about it. I don’t want to make that image. If people had asked me about it previously, I would have spoken about it. But nobody did.”
Vidya Balan was removed from a film and the producer had passed some nasty comments on her.
When asked if she has ever faced a situation like this, Anushka asserted, “That hasn’t happened with me where someone is so vocal about what they feel. But when people go talking about things in a roundabout manner, I’m intelligent enough to understand what they are saying. They might just tell you, ‘The look wasn’t right’. That’s an indirect way of talking about the physical aspect of you. It will always be backed by some politically correct statements, which is fake and to me, that’s far more disrespectful. I feel it’s better if someone tells me to my face that you aren’t good-looking enough for the part. Saamne hi bol do na! I prefer things to be said to me straight-up because otherwise, in that roundabout thing, you also are left confused.”
Priyanka Chopra had said in our interview that a producer had called heroines like her ‘replaceable’. When asked if she has ever been replace, Anushka asserted, “No, I have never been replaced. But there was a director who made me say yes to a film, right at the beginning of my career, and then he never told me that the film isn’t happening. I kept thinking it will happen. But then, I called someone and I got to know he isn’t doing the film anymore. The director never bothered to even inform me. And I was supposed to be putting on a lot of weight for the film, making a physical transformation in the way I looked. I even started talking to nutritionists and all, but this fellow didn’t even have the courtesy of informing me.”
However, Anushka holds no grudge against the filmmaker. “I have listened to him and heard him out because I don’t hold grudges. But when he approached me again, I didn’t do his films because they weren’t good,” sh said before signing off.
CREDITS: DNA