I never wanted to become an actor, says Raveena
It started with her not wanting to become an actor, but now, she has been in the industry for 30 years. Mention it to Raveena Tandon, and she laughs, “It makes me feel like some ancient veteran. When you say it aloud, it doesn’t feel like that. Every new film or show I do, I’ve butterflies in my stomach. I am still learning.”
Daughter of producerdirector Ravi Tandon, she went on to establish herself in a variety of genres. One might think she 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. It was destiny that makers spotted me in my first year of college. It wasn’t that my dad 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,” says the 46-year-old.
It was actually the makers of Pathhar Ke Phool (1991), who approached her father to let her act. “They said, ‘ghar ki bacchi hai, don’t worry, everything will be taken care of’,” says Tandon.
Three decades later, today, she is set to make her web debut. Ask her what is it about her which helped her survive, and she says she doesn’t know. The actor says, “There is a lot more in me yet to be tapped. In terms of my filmography, I managed to do some varied stuff and got accepted. I have no clue how I stayed relevant. I started experimenting pretty early. I started getting bored and needed something that challenged me as an actor. You need to grow, evolve, and that is what I always tried.”
There’s this nepotism debate today, which I think is ridiculous. Things happened on their own for me. RAVEENA TANDON, Actor