‘I’m not rigid, but open to life’

She had no plans to enter Bollywood but made her debut in 2003 with Sudhir Mishra’s Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, and her performance was widely appreciated by critics and audience alike. In hindsight, Chitrangada Singh says her vulnerability worked in her favour, and that she was never rigid about things.

“When I sit down and watch some of the scenes from my debut film, I see a vulnerable girl on-screen, who just followed the vision of her film director, without knowing much about acting. Without trying to prove her skill as a performer, a level of being clueless at times.

“The fact is I am never rigid, fixing a goal or being ambitious,” Chitrangada, whose next big screen outing is Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster 3, said. That’s why she feels she is “open to life”. “Even when a difficult situation comes my way, I am not heartbroken to think ‘Oh my God, what will happen next? This is not how I planned my life!’ My approach towards life is never that. “Having said that, I am more focused on my career. I am focused enough to explore, but I do to make a strategy to do an item number for changing my image and then play a part in an offbeat film to maintain the image of an intellectual actor,” she said.

There is an influx of women story writers and filmmakers in the Indian film industry. Chitrangada has joined the bandwagon as producer of Soorma. She believes a female gaze on a men’s film would definitely be different.

The way a woman sees masculinity and power — it brings a new perspective to a male character. “My all-time favourite example is Kathryn Bigelow.”—IANS