Mumbai, Sep 25 Veteran actor Soni Razdan says the film industry wrote her off after marriage and she had to rely on television to find consistent acting work.
Razdan made her debut in Hindi films in a supporting role with the 1981 film, “36 Chowringhee Lane”, and went on to work in acclaimed movies such as Shyam Benegal’s “Mandi” and “Trikal”, Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s “Khamosh”, and Mahesh Bhatt’s “Saransh”.
She married Bhatt in 1986 and the couple have two daughters — Shaheen Bhatt and Alia Bhatt.
The 69-year-old actor revealed that she was not getting many acting offers after her marriage. In fact, it was her husband who offered her “bit” roles in his films, including “Daddy”, “Sadak”, “Sir” and “Gumrah”, among others.
“I was sort of written off, people didn’t bother about me at all. Then I came back. In fact, Siddharth’s (P Malhotra, filmmaker) father was the one whose company gave me work consistently. So, I was shooting every month, but not for more than eight or 10 days,” she told PTI.
Razdan said television gave her an opportunity to return to work, eventually opening doors for her to resume her acting career. She went on to feature in shows such as “Junoon” and “Saahil” in the 1990s.
“That (TV) was what gave me the strength to come back into acting. Then after that, things followed on from there. So, many other things happened.”
Razdan fondly recalled the phase of parallel cinema of the 80s and her collaboration with the likes of Benegal, Aparna Sen, Naseeruddin Shah and Shabana Azmi.
“They (Naseer and Shabana) set a trend at the time with alternative cinema that grew in those days… They got great roles. Everybody wasn’t as fortunate. But we followed on from there and did different things. Television came in, then films changed a bit, and then OTT came, so there’s an evolution which has taken place over so many years.”
Razdan said as she grows older, her approach to acting has also evolved.
She yearns to play “meaty” roles and is less concerned about factors such as the “length of a role” or “how she is perceived”.
“I feel free now, I’ve shaken off a lot of baggage of what I had when I was younger. Also, it doesn’t matter so much how you look. Like, those days you are so conscious of how you look, you’ve to look a certain way, you’ve to be this, you’ve to be that because you are in that age. When you are older it’s, you become much freer, I’m having fun, actually.”
Razdan, who currently stars in the Netflix series “Shaque”, revealed that she is working on a film that she plans to direct.
“I’m planning to direct something, and I’m working on it. We unfortunately can’t talk about it. It’s a movie, and it’s very interesting. It’s taking a long time to put together because it’s quite complex. I’m not going to act in it,” she said.
In “Shaque”, Razdan features alongside an ensemble cast including Parineeti Chopra, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Harleen Sethi, Jennifer Winget, Sumeet Vyas, Anup Soni, and Chaitanya Choudhry among others.
(PTI News)
