30 years of Raveena Tandon| ‘I am in this industry by default, I never wanted to become an actor’

Actor Raveena Tandon, who started her career 30 years ago with Salman Khan in Pathhar Ke Phool, recalls how acting happened for her, and the secret to her staying relevant.

It started with her not wanting to become an actor, and it’s been three decades for Raveena Tandon since. Mention it to her, and she laughs, “It makes me feel like some ancient veteran. When you say it aloud to yourself that it’s been 30 years you have been doing this, it doesn’t feel like that. Every new film or show or scene I do, I still have butterflies in my stomach. I am still learning, there is so much new technology, one is always a learner till the end. That’s the way it is.”

Actor Raveena Tandon started her film career with Pathhar Ke Phool opposite Salman Khan in 1991.

Daughter of producer-director Ravi Tandon, she went on to establish herself in a variety of genres, be it comedy, drama or social message driven content. One might think she would have got everything on a silver platter, but the reality, she says, was far from it.

“I am in this industry by default, I never wanted to be an actress. I was a little plump, reserved kid who bit her nails, was always conscious of people looking at her. Even in the class, I was that, so I sat on the back bench. Fortunately for me, even in school I got lead roles, annual functions, the play we performed. It always worked for me strangely, I used to do it though I would be nervous,” tells us the 46-year-old.

The initial ambition she held was to venture into direction, but fate had it’s own plans. Tandon recalls, “I think the metamorphism happened then. I joined Prahlad Kakkar (ad guru), he always told me I need to be on screen, I used to say no. I started getting offers, but I refused, keen to finish my education first. I got seven-eight offers before Patthar Ke Phool, like Jungle and Heer Ranjha. It’s not that they weren’t great films to be associated with, but I hadn’t made up my mind. It was destiny that the makers spotted me in my first year of college. It wasn’t that my dad (Ravi Tandon) influenced someone to take me into films, or pushed me. There’s this nepotism debate today, which I think is ridiculous, things happened on their own for me. If I didn’t have the face for it, I wouldn’t have been discovered or got offers.”

It was actually the makers of Pathhar Ke Phool, who approached her father to let her act. And what helped the actor make her decision was her college friends. “The makers asked my father and said ‘ghar ki bacchi hai, don’t worry, everything will be taken care of’. The next day I went to college and told my friends ‘guess what? I am doing a film with Salman Khan’ All of them begged me ‘say yes, just do it for us. We will come on set, take pictures, after that if you don’t want to act in films, don’t’! I did that exactly, and the rest is history,” laughs Tandon.

Three decades later, today, she is set to make her web debut. Reinventing herself has kept her relevant after all this while. However, ask her what is it about her which she feels helped her survive, and she doesn’t know. The actor says, “I feel there is a lot more in me yet to be tapped. In terms of my filmography,I was the only heroine who had a Dulhe Raja (1998) releasing at the same time as a Shool (1999), Aks at the same time as Daman (both 2001). Ghulam e Mustafa (1997), Bade Miyan Chote Miyan (!998) alongside. I think I managed to do some varied stuff and got accepted. I have no clue how I stayed relevant. I actually started experimenting pretty early. I started getting bored myself of what I was doing, and needed something that challenged myself as an actor. You need to grow, evolve, and that is what I always tried.”

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