I've Never Thought Of My Screen Characters As Being A Particular Age

@Tabutiful is her Instagram handle. Follow her and you’d agree with the nomenclature of the handle. Yet her beauty is just one of the many things that define this actor, who has stayed relevant in a highly ageist film industry which is itching to shove a woman actor over age 35 into that deep, dark abyss called peripheral roles. Femina Editor Tanya Chaitanya meets the consummate actor, equally loved in commercial and parallel cinema, to know how she continues to keep the audience, especially the hard-to-please millennials, marvelling at her acting chops

- Tanya Chaitanya

Tabu surprises. She is hard to reach—as she’s strictly off Whatsapp. She likes things to be muted—so she tells her manager and team to avoid showing up at our cover shoot. She laughs incurably—at her own bread fetish. That this unassuming person could have gone on to make movies that are in Indian cinema’s hall of fame is the biggest surprise. Then again, acknowledge her performing prowess, we must.

In the recent Andhadhun, she blindsided us with her quicksilver portrayal of a deliciously evil woman; in Golmaal Again, she showcased her goofball timing and in what could only be called a bold move; in Fitoor, a Hindi adaptation of my favourite book The Great Expectations, she played the complex role of Miss Havisham with precision. Tabu, if anything, doesn’t let the length of the role or the age of her character deter her from choosing a film. She tells me, “Even in Haider, when I was asked to play Shahid’s mother, it was a radical casting which, to be honest, only Vishal Bhardawaj could envision and pull off. On paper, it would sound odd that I was playing Shahid’s mother, but the role was not of a typical mother. Rather than underlining the mother-son relationship, here we were defining the undercurrent. Without showing skin, her sexuality was very pronounced. Her equation with the titular character was at the core of the narrative.”

She elaborates on how she views the issue of screen age. “At no stage as a person have I thought of myself in a number as in ab main 16 ki umar hoon, 25 ki hoon, 30 ki hoon, ya 40 ki hoon. I never looked at myself as a particular age—rather, I related and connected to what I was feeling as a person in any phase. This attitude may have reflected in the work I was offered.” What also helped her in the journey was that she escaped being typecast.