TISCA REMINISCES HER INITIAL DAYS IN BOLLYWOOD
Apart from being a successful actor, not many people know that Tisca Chopra also wrote a sort of manual for people aspiring to enter showbiz a couple of years ago, called Acting Smart: Your Ticket to Showbiz. In it, she had mentioned how one will face ‘insurmountable obstacles’ on the way to success. We ask her what really transpired for her to come to this conclusion, and Tisca says, “A director once told me ‘your nose is too long’. And I was like what can I do about it? I’m not looking at plastic surgery as an option to cut my nose down, what do you do with that? It’s just the way it is! Another director, after my work became successful, said ‘My God, you have a beautiful nose’. I started laughing, and he asked me ‘are you crazy? I am complimenting you!’ I replied that somebody had said the exact opposite thing. When you start out working, new people hear ‘tumme namak nahi hai’ ‘yeh nahi hai’, then that person suddenly starts working and all those things that you think never existed suddenly pop out. Those are obstacles.”
There are the obnoxious attitudes,too, a newcomer has to battle. “When I had just come into the business, a director said ‘just copy what I’m doing. Actors are monkeys’. I looked at him and thought ‘training, theatre and we are reduced to monkeys?’ He’s no longer working at all, and I’m ready to direct my first film. It’s been a long journey, from people telling me how to lead my life, doing this and that,” says Tisca, who’s been a part of acclaimed films such as Taare Zameen Par (2007) and Firaaq (2008).
The 45-year-old elaborates, “I kept going back to my instincts even back then. I would take their advice, not saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’, then I would think about it. That allowed me to stay current. I didn’t want to lead someone’s else’s idea of my life.”
When I had just come into the business, a director said ‘just copy what I’m doing. Actors are monkeys’. I looked at him and thought ‘ we’re reduced to monkeys?’
TISCA CHOPRA, ACTOR