I HATED THE PRESSURE OF LOOKING A CERTAIN WAY

It may surprise Konkona Sen Sharma’s fans that the actor who stunned everyone with her flawless performances in films such as Mr. and Mrs. Iyer, Page 3 and Omkara didn’t enjoy acting at all in the beginning. It took a while for her to adjust. “Acting has not been a smooth sailing journey. I never wanted to be an actor. Till my third film, I didn’t imagine that I would continue acting. I didn’t like it at all. It was only after three films that I became comfortable with acting,” says Konkona. The pressure to look a certain way also got on her nerves. “I was very unhappy. I used to cry regularly. I felt a lot of pressure to look a certain way. I was just very uncomfortable with the whole situation. Eventually, things changed. I don’t know how and when, but it changed,” she says. Konkona recalls that while acting in a Bengali film that was a remake of a Hollywood film, she had a difficult time turning herself into the character. “I had to be thin. My hair was curly, which I never enjoyed. Your body is not your own when you are acting in a film. It becomes your character’s body. Everyone sees you like that and builds up perceptions of you that have nothing to do with you. It took me getting used to that,” says the 37-year-old actor. After Konkona Sen Sharma had her son, she shot for Gaur Hari Dastaan, in which she played a 60- year-old woman. During that time, she had an inner awakening. “I remember driving to shoot. I could see those big lights. The makeup mirror and the lights gave me a sense of belonging and home. Along the way, I did realise how I had started to love this,” she says.

Last year can safely be called Sushant Singh Rajput’s turning point in career. MS Dhoni: The Untold Story (2016) was a blockbuster and catapulted him into the league of bankable actors at the box office. Ask him if the attitude of people around him has changed after his recent success, and he says, “People who are close to me, their attitudes have not changed because they completely know that I am the same. However, I have improved on things that I was already doing but was not very good at. I have stopped obsessing about the future. There are a few things that I would hold on to about my past, which I have just completely let go. So just being in that moment and immediate experience liberates you of so many clutches.” Now, the actor will be seen in Raabta — a romantic thriller and a story on reincarnation. So far many stories based on the theme of reincarnation have been explored in Bollywood. On asking him about the factors that appealed to him about Raabta, he says he doesn’t sign films based on their genre. “Had that been the case I would have never done MS Dhoni. Every film or every story is a different permutation and combination, and there are only so many ways you can tell a story. Having said that, every director has different ways of creating a film; it is very subjective,” says Sushant. “I don’t believe in reincarnation, it is slightly more difficult as an actor to be pro a film if your beliefs are not the same [as that of the film’s subject]. But the way the story had a flow, I got so involved that I wanted to believe in reincarnation during the hours I spent reading the story. Also, this is the 56th character I have played. But for the very first

I like Kriti Sanon’s professionalism and passion for work. I don’t like people who are not professional, no matter how talented they are SUSHANT SINGH RAJPUT, ACTOR

time, in one story, I would be playing two characters.” The actor is sharing the frame with Kriti Sanon (left) for the first time. Prod him about the qualities he admires in Kriti, and he says, “I like her professionalism and passion for work. I don’t like people who are not professional, no matter how talented they are.”