EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
The first time I saw Alia Bhatt was at the India Today Conclave in Mumbai in 2017. All of 23, she stepped onto the stage with youthful confidence. So much so that you could not tell that just half an hour before her session, the teleprompter had given way. Unfazed, she began speaking, in what was an imaginary conversation with her father, the filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt. For the next 20 minutes, Alia held her audience in thrall, with a performance worthy of a thespian. Striking a self-deprecatory tone, Alia recounted how before she set out on a promotional tour for a film, her father would call and let her know the name of the chief minister of the state she was visiting. Anyone else would have found it difficult to live down the blunder she made on Koffee with Karan in 2013, when she couldn’t name the President of India, but this was Alia.
She may not have known Pranab Mukherjee was the head of the state at the time, but most in the film industry agree that she knows how to act. The 29-year-old actor has given a career-best performance in the recently released Gangubai Kathiawadi, Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s biopic on the daredevil ‘Madam’ of Kamatipura. Alia essays the role with total abandon, lighting up every second of the frame. The film has earned Rs 122 crore at the box office, becoming the second-biggest female-fronted film after Tanu Weds Manu Returns (2015). Young women, including little girls, have embraced Gangubai’s swagger and sartorial style. The film marks a turning point in Alia’s career as she asserts herself as an artist whose stardom flows from her talent. Her latest release, SS Rajamouli’s action epic RRR, in which she has a cameo that marks her foray into the southern market, is poised to be the second-biggest Indian film after Bahubali 2. Her current brand value—$68.1 million (Rs 515.5 crore) per the latest Duff & Phelps annual report—is the highest among all female actors and puts her fourth behind cricketer Virat Kohli, and actors Ranveer Singh and Akshay Kumar.
Talk to her directors, and they will tell you she’s a natural. “You cannot rely on talent forever, so she is deepening and honing it,” says Gauri Shinde, who directed her in Dear Zindagi. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who cast her in Gangubai..., thinks she has the “potential to go global and make India proud”. In india today’s July 1, 2013 cover, ‘The Era of Ranbir’, the writer had referred to the actor as “India’s latest acting superstar”. Alia is a worthy inheritor of that label. Like Ranbir, she too comes from a film family—her mother, Soni Razdan, is an actor—but made her debut in a film produced outside the family banner. Karan Johar, who directed her debut, Student of the Year, had tested 400 female actors before he chanced upon the 17-year-old newcomer who had known she wanted to be an actor since she was two years old. After watching her dance and read lines from Wake Up Sid!, he recalls saying to himself, ‘She’s a movie star.’
Alia has proven time and again that she is very much one.
In only her second film, Highway, Alia, then 20, demonstrated how she thrives when presented with challenging roles. After commercial hits in 2 States and Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania, she was in top form playing a Bihari migrant forced into drug addiction in Udta Punjab. She cemented her status as one of India’s top female actors with Raazi, where she put in a moving performance as a spy questioning her actions as she puts her nation first. Critical acclaim is one thing, but Alia has also matched it with numbers at the box office. Her 13 theatrical releases have collectively grossed over Rs 1,000 crore nationwide.
In our cover story this week, ‘The Allure of Alia’, Senior Editor Suhani Singh captures the rage Alia has become in 2022 with her bravura act in Gangubai.... “Petite in frame, Alia can appear larger than life on screen,” Singh writes. “She fills the screen with her presence, and her raspy delivery of dialogue speaks of an assuredness that comes naturally to seasoned actors.” Charting her journey from a gregarious girl to a confident young woman, the story documents her rise, which many saw coming, including philosopher U.G. Krishnamurti. And Alia isn’t done yet. She makes her Hollywood debut in a film starring Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman). In her mission “to have more control of the stories”, she has turned producer for the films she is part of. Later this year, she finally features alongside Ranbir, her boyfriend of five years, in Brahmastra.
In india today’s 46-year-long run, only a handful of heroines have graced its cover. It was Shabana Azmi in 1983, with a string of acclaimed films—Avtaar, Mandi and Masoom. A decade later, Madhuri Dixit challenged “male dominance in Hindi filmdom” as Hum Aapke Hain Koun! broke box-office records. Deepika Padukone was on a dream run in 2014 when she delivered four back-to-back hits, and Priyanka Chopra spoke of her international ambition as she began work on the TV series Quantico in 2015. Now Alia has joined this tiny, elite club of female actors who have made Hindi cinema richer and more rewarding with their craft, ambition and charisma. More power to them.
One of the most perceptive thoughts on the paradoxes of acting that I have read comes from the veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah. “You must be simultaneously totally oblivious to, and keenly aware of, your audience,” he wrote. “You must pretend they are not there yet must be catered to. You must believe you are the character but remember that you are not. And the strangest of all, the moment you become convinced you are a great actor, you cease to be one.” As Alia continues to shine in the galaxy of Bollywood stars, she would do well to heed these words of wisdom.