She had me at the edge of my seat fighting the urge to scream as Manjulika, a spirit looking to avenge her lost love in Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007). She made me want to lose my inhibitions as she unflinchingly danced her way through The Dirty Picture (2011). And recently, she made me embrace my complexity through her portrayal of the passionate and sometimes irrational mathematical genius Shakuntala Devi in the eponymous film. That’s the thing about Vidya Balan and her character choices—she doesn’t play them, she is them. And they are a force to reckon with, much like the woman herself.
“I live my dream every single day,” says Balan, her voice ringing through my phone— strong, soft, self-assured—from her Mumbai home to mine. “I’ve been drawn to acting since the age of eight. I’m glad it worked out for me.” As she talks about her craft, this prodigious performer, a Padma Shri, and National Film Award winner, is more Alice-in wonderland (curious and yearning for excitement) than established hall-of-Famer. She shares, “To walk in another person’s shoes for a while, wondering what they must have felt or how they reacted when confronted with a certain situation, is what I am fascinated by.”
WOMAN PROPOSES, GODDESS DISPOSES
This story is from the November 2020 edition of VOGUE India.
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This story is from the November 2020 edition of VOGUE India.
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