‘I am a total drama queen’

Neha Saini

In Bollywood, if one doesn’t believe in ‘marketing oneself as a brand, chances are that either he or she is too confident of his or her acting prowess or just happy to struggle his or her way up, gradually’. Aditi Rao Hydari confesses to be the ‘gradual struggler’ kind, in no hurry to compete in the rat race to be on the top. Five years into the film industry and with a work profile that has the best names in business –Sudhir Mishra, Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra, Imtiaz Ali and Mukesh Bhatt—the pretty actor surely relies on her acting skills to do that.

“I have never really believed in marketing strategies or brand building, which sadly, is a reality in Bollywood. It’s not one of my strengths, rather acting is. I have been a learner. I come from a very protected environment with no filmy background. So, I have been clear about my agenda right from the moment I entered the industry and that is to do quality work,” she says.

But that doesn’t mean she could be taken lightly by her peers. “I am a total drama queen. I just love to act and don various avatars. I strive to re-invent myself with each role and that’s why I try to be a part of films that have beautiful stories to tell.”

Her recent film Guddu Rangeela didn’t do much on the box office with numbers, but that doesn’t bother her. “A film is a reflection of a team that works behind it, the production, the director, the creative team, technicians. It’s an idea and an actor just breathes life into that idea. So, failures or success should not only be attributed to actors alone.”

A Bharatnatyam dancer and disciple of noted exponent Leela Samson, acting was never on cards for her till she came across her mentor Sudhir Mishra, who launched her with Yeh Saali Zindagi. Though she has done selected films in her five-year-old film career, Aditi is not ‘picky’ about her films.

“I am glad that I am working with a generation of professionals, who celebrate cinema and not just make films for moolah. There are films being made that challenge actors to excel and not just rely on piggybacking on the star value.” She believes that there is hope for the ‘outsiders’ in Bollywood as the new generation of cinema is all about telling beautiful stories.

She is quite excited for her upcoming films Wazir, which is due to release this year and Aur Devdas with Sudhir Mishra. “For Wazir, I had to pinch myself hard to believe that I was working with one of the legends of the film industry, Amitabh Bachchan. It’s one of my dream projects and I really am confident about it. As for Aur Devdas, it’s been a difficult film for me. I had to play a character that is so far removed from who I am as a person in real life. I play a college dropout, who gets involved into the mirky business of politics and how it affects my life. It’s one of the most anticipated projects of my career.”

Unlike the cat fights we are so used to witnessing in tinsel town, Aditi confesses that she admires some of her contemporaries. “I really like Vidya Balan for her body of work and the way she is able to re-invent herself. Another actor that I like is Kangana Ranuat, she is fun, spunky and spontaneous and also Deepika Padukone for how she has managed to improvise herself into one of the finest actor we have today.”