What is it that makes Vidya Balan, the Parineeta (2005) girl, a bona fide superstar in Bollywood, a tag that was traditionally reserved for heroes?
In fact, if producers today are a bit less scared to invest in female-led movies, a lot of it has to do with Vidya, who has proved time and again, with power-packed, hard-hitting performances in movies like Paa (2009), Ishqiya (2010), The Dirty Picture (2011) and Kahaani (2012), that you don’t need bulging biceps and a ripped body to carry a film and get the cash registers ringing.
And now she has just hit a hat-trick at the box office with the back-to-back successes of Tumhari Sulu (2017), Mission Mangal (2019) and Shakuntala Devi (2020). So, what is her success mantra?
Across the telephone lines of Mumbai, my first question is answered with hearty laughter.
“I don’t know,” squeaks Vidya, breathless from laughter. “I have always struggled to answer this question. I think, like every human being, I have grown and evolved as an individual. But I still make decisions based on my gut feeling, my intuition. I know instinctively whether I want to do a film or not and sometimes even the most perfect scripts don’t inspire that feeling in me.”
{{/usCountry}}“I don’t know,” squeaks Vidya, breathless from laughter. “I have always struggled to answer this question. I think, like every human being, I have grown and evolved as an individual. But I still make decisions based on my gut feeling, my intuition. I know instinctively whether I want to do a film or not and sometimes even the most perfect scripts don’t inspire that feeling in me.”
{{/usCountry}}Vidya acknowledges that sometimes her instincts don’t lead to box office blockbusters. “But I have realised that when I base my decision on other criteria, I eventually start to question that decision and also I don’t enjoy the process as much,” elaborates the actor, who has seen both spectacular highs and dismal lows in her career.
Guts and glory
Cold-blooded strategy has never worked for Vidya. In fact, it has always backfired. “Ideally, when you are a success, there is pressure to maintain the graph. But I am incapable of making those calculations. Whenever I have gone with my instinct, I have been happy irrespective of the outcome,” she says.
“I cannot predict what will work at the box office. I don’t think anyone can. There is no map. Like everyone else, I hope the film will be a success, but strategy is pointless. If you tell the story convincingly, make the film with love and care and dedication, the chances of it succeeding are much more than the insertion of a random song to grab eyeballs. What I can do as an actor is give a good performance. For that, I need to enjoy the process. What makes me happy is being on set, performing in front of the camera. A film should only be made for the joy of it.”
Perhaps, you think, a brand like Vidya can afford to go with her gut, unlike newer actors. But her experience really has nothing to do with it, says the star.
“I always had a wide variety of scripts to choose from, especially over the past 12 years. The options are better whether my previous film worked or not. But the only thing that matters is my instinct. Choosing a film based on other considerations has never panned out well. For example, when I did Bobby Jasoos (2014), I was very excited. It was the first female detective film in Bollywood and suddenly I was proving a point. But today, I admit I did the film for the wrong reason. Maybe I would have still picked the script, but I wouldn’t have rushed into it the way I did. I would have given myself more time to prepare.”
Failures, the pillars of success
Vidya has not only learnt from her mistakes but turned them into her trump cards. Among the many criticisms she has faced over the years, she was trolled the most for her roles in Heyy Babyy (2007) and Kismat Konnection (2008). But she says she is indebted to that phase.
“As they say, failures are the stepping stones to success. As long as you can see that. At that point, honestly, I couldn’t. I was still very new and was rather devastated. But when something doesn’t work out, you consider other possibilities. I would not have come on my own if that phase had not happened,” she says.
“You take different dance classes to realise, oh, it is Bharatanatyam that I like. You need to go through all kinds to eliminate the ones that are not your cup of tea. Similarly with genres of films,” she adds.
Today, she definitely knows what kind of movies she doesn’t want to do. Her two most important criteria when picking a film are: 1) Does she want to tell that story in the first place? and 2) Does she want to tell the story via the role she has been offered.
“There have been instances where I have loved the story but some other character, maybe even a male character, has really caught my interest,” she laughs.
But her most important criterion is: Will the movie interest me as part of the audience?
“For instance, I would not do a horror film since I don’t really enjoy them,” she says, casually snapping the hearts of Manjulika fans. Her portrayal of the gorgeous and very scary, haunted wife in the comic-horror thriller Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007) is one of her iconic characters!
A director’s actor and a producer’s wife
Vidya considers herself a director’s actor. “The director needs to inspire faith in me that as an actor I can completely surrender myself to her/his vision,” says Vidya. Of course, she does her homework too but the movie as a whole is based on the director’s vision. For instance, Shakuntala Devi was told from the perspective of the mathemagician’s daughter.
“So I had to be the daughter’s version of Shakuntala Devi, which is bound to be a bit different from the actual person,” explains Vidya. “After all, five different people talking about the same person will always have different versions stemming from their individual backstories and reference points.”
But actors are collaborators in the great production of making a story come to life and there, Vidya says, constant give and take often makes characters well-rounded.
In our last interview, the actor had insisted that marriage has not changed her much, but four more years into it, she finally acknowledges one major impact.
“Being married to a producer, I know what a producer brings to the table. He actually puts everything together and creates the atmosphere for everyone to give their best – or not! So, now I am also cautious about the producers on a film and whether they can do justice to the project,” she says.
Overall, though, she is a star not because of her directors and producers, but because of her indomitable spirit and her near-magical quality of turning her ‘drawbacks’ into her USP. Vidya Balan has single-handedly broken the Bollywood heroine stereotypes, slaying it in her sari, her extra pounds adding extra layers of oomph!
From HT Brunch, August 23, 2020
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