Actor Vidya Balan has spoken about facing a ‘scarring’ casting couch situation in the past. Vidya, who most recently appeared with Akshay Kumar in the blockbuster film Mission Mangal, was speaking about her past struggles in an interview.
Recalling the incident, she said, “One day I remember I was in Chennai and this director came to meet me. I said let’s sit in the coffee shop and he kept insisting that he wants to talk to me and that we should go to the room. I left the door of my room open and he left within five minutes. This incident suddenly struck me today when I’m talking about this.”
She added, “Someone wrote that ‘Dress like this, she has no business of getting out, she should stay indoors’. That had affected me so much that for the longest time, I would get dreams of it and get really angry. Today, I don’t let the noise get to me.”
Vidya also spoke about the time when she signed 12 Tamil films, but ended up getting replaced on each one of them, because the agreements were verbal, and not written down. “My parents flew to Chennai and spoke to the producer, who showed clips from the film and said, ‘Look at her, does she look like a heroine?’” Vidya added. She said that the experience made her ‘feel like s**t’ and she didn’t look in the mirror for what felt like six months, because she felt ugly. Vidya said that she found it difficult to forgive the man after the incident, but can honestly say that she has now.
Vidya’s performance in Mission Mangal has been acclaimed. The film, which also stars Taapsee Pannu, Sonakshi Sinha, Nithya Menen, Kirti Kulhari and others, has made over Rs 160 crore at the India box office.
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