‘TRISHALA WANTED TO BE AN ACTRESS. I WANTED TO BREAK HER LEGS’

Sanjay Dutt has revealed that his daughter, Trishala, hoped to be an actor, but he wants her to make a career in forensic science. The 57-year-old actor says he has invested a lot of time and energy in the 28-year-old’s education and will not have her join Bollywood. Trishala is Dutt’s daughter from his first marriage to late actor Richa Sharma, and lives in America with her grandparents. “I’ve invested a lot of time and energy to put her (Trishala) in a good college, and she has done very well. She has specialised in forensic science... And I think that’s the great thing to do (sic)” says Dutt. The actor, who has now started shooting after completing his prison term in February last year, says becoming an actor is not easy. And that it is going to be tougher for Trishala as she has to work on her Hindi. “Even if she wants to join the (film) industry, she has to learn Hindi, because American (English) will not work here. It is not easy to be an actor. It looks easy but it is quite difficult,” he says, at a shoot schedule in Agra. Asked if he finds any similarities between the on-screen character of his daughter in the film, and Trishala, Dutt says, “Yes, there are similarities but Trishala wanted to be an actress and I wanted to break her legs, which I’m not doing here (in the film).” Talking about his bond with his kids, the father of three, including six-year-old twins from his third marriage, says, “I share a beautiful relationship with my children. I remember that my father (Sunil Dutt) used to say, ‘I’m not your friend, I’m your father’. That’s the way I am with my kids. His strongly worded, patronising statement about his daughter, who has expressed an interest to work in films in several past interviews, however, was not received too kindly on social media. “What if Nargis Dutt’s father had broken her legs before she became an actress. Sanju Baba would have never been born,” posted @aryqam on Twitter, referring to Dutt’s late mother, an accomplished actor. “These kind of parents only break the future generation’s dream,” wrote Twitter user @ Iamthesalmanfan.”

No, he’s (Dutt) not okay with me joining Bollywood ... I love my dad, and I would love to make him happy The reason why I wanted to do films was because I wanted to be close to my father — it’s as simple as that. He obviously did not care about that, and today, I thank him. As a woman in Bollywood, I’ve been seeing it for myself over the past five to six years — you don’t last. It’s a very male-dominated industry

TRISHALA DUTT IN 2011 TRISHALA DUTT TO HT IN JUNE 2015

PHOTO: