WHY FEWER SCRIPTS FOR SENIOR FEMALE ACTORS? : SHARMILA TAGORE
Veteran Bollywood actress and former Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) head Sharmila Tagore feels there are very few scripts written keeping in mind ‘elderly’ heroines, while the same is not true for their male counterparts. “So many scripts are written for elderly male actors; these things are not happening for female actors. The girls have to be very young and the man can carry on forever,” says Sharmila.
“One has to accept that life doesn’t stop there [at a young age]. In my time, life stopped at 30 or 40, but it doesn’t have to because life carries on and there are a lot of interesting phases in life which they (the audience) might like,” adds the actress, who had made her acting debut at the age of 13 with Satyajit Ray’s Apur Sansar (1959).