Having made her Bollywood debut with Imtiaz Ali’s Jab We Met (2007), actor Saumya Tandon is not new to the big screen. Her portrayal of Roop (sister of Geet, the character played by Kareena Kapoor Khan) in the love story got widely noticed. After this collaboration with Kareena and the film’s male star Shahid Kapoor, cinema took a backseat for Saumya. She has mostly worked on TV, as one of the lead characters on a top daily soap, and as a reality show host. In fact, Saumya is back as the host of a show that brings showbiz personalities together.
It was in connection with her show that Saumya met the one actor she is keen on working with — Sanjay Dutt. She admires the senior actor and looks up to him, and after meeting him on the TV show sets, Saumya can’t stop saying how warm and easy-going Dutt is.
“I don’t know when I’d get a chance to work with him, but it was a pleasure meeting him and to know him in person, to interview him — he was so candid, so real, so touching and even his sense of humour is unique,” says Saumya, whose all-time favourite movies of Dutt are Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003) and Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006). “I feel there’s no one else who could have [played] that endearing character, apart from Sanjay Dutt,” she states.
Talking more about this, Saumya shares that Dutt is not pretentious in any way. “In our industry, when we have actors trying to create an image for themselves, pretending and always posing, he’s the only one whom I find real,” she says. “He is a fighter, a real survivor. I don’t think there’s a more compelling story than Sanjay Dutt’s, where he has had such lows and highs in his life, but he has always managed to get back, whether it’s his addiction, or the TADA case where he went to jail and came back. I feel it’s difficult to go through everything that Sanjay Dutt has gone through. His life is an open book. He has a real attitude, [when] there are a lot of people who have a put-on attitude.”
{{/usCountry}}Talking more about this, Saumya shares that Dutt is not pretentious in any way. “In our industry, when we have actors trying to create an image for themselves, pretending and always posing, he’s the only one whom I find real,” she says. “He is a fighter, a real survivor. I don’t think there’s a more compelling story than Sanjay Dutt’s, where he has had such lows and highs in his life, but he has always managed to get back, whether it’s his addiction, or the TADA case where he went to jail and came back. I feel it’s difficult to go through everything that Sanjay Dutt has gone through. His life is an open book. He has a real attitude, [when] there are a lot of people who have a put-on attitude.”
{{/usCountry}}Saumya continues, “What’s endearing about him is that he is this six feet tall man with bulging biceps, but he still manages to display this level of vulnerability. For me, he’s the complete man, a man of his words because he owns up to his mistakes and fights back.”
Interact with Shreya Mukherjee on Twitter/ @Shreya_MJ
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