I was thrilled to play a role on ‘Dora the Explorer,’ a show that has touched the lives of many children around the world, including my own child. Dora is such an iconic and important Latina heroine, and I’m proud to now be a part of the show’s ever-growing legacy.
Whether I’ll get the chance to write fiction, I don’t know. I could do political conspiracy thrillers, couldn’t I? With an investigative journalist as the heroine.
For me, saying ‘I love you’ is the same as unbuttoning the heroine’s kurti.
I started my career with her. I was supposed to do my first film in Tamil in which she was the other heroine. The film was titled ‘Vennira Aadai.’ It was a love triangle, with Jayalalithaaji and I playing the hero’s two love interests. But the director Sridhar removed me from the film after a few days’ shooting.
Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.
I have been fortunate to get different types of work, but by and large till 90s for actors like me there were not many opportunities besides playing brother of the heroine or friend of the hero or young college villain after the earlier new wave was consumed by television.
‘Captain Marvel,’ whereby the steel trap is challenged, where the hero is a heroine, where the most powerful person who has the welfare of the future of the human race is a woman. What else can it be? Because that was the role of my mother when I was a kid.
Once a heroine is beyond a certain age, she has to graduate to mother’s roles or quit.
I was just 15 years old when I did my first film, ‘Faulad,’ in 1963, opposite Dara Singh. Although I had worked earlier as a child actress, this was my first break as a lead heroine.
Every good movie I watch, the hero becomes my favourite. I start blushing every time a hero romances a heroine.
When ‘I’ released, I gave a couple of interviews in which I expressed my interest to play an action heroine.
I am not a heroine, I am an actor, and that’s why I don’t think there is any expiry to me.
When kids were busy playing at the age of 11, I was singing for the heroine of ‘Shastra.’
I’m sorry, but to ask an audience these days to invest three hours in a show requires your heroine be an understandable and fully rounded character.
It is said that no star is a heroine to her makeup artist.
This schizophrenic thinking that a glamorous heroine cannot act and an actress cannot ooze glamour must go.
I was watching ‘Heroine,’ and I really liked Kareena Kapoor a lot!
I feel that, historically, the Art Deco period has the most resonance for me. As a person, it has to be the plucky Clara Bow, the heroine of American silent movies of the 1920s. She embodied feminine dressing mixed with men’s style. All this then evolved into the exquisite style and simplicity of Coco Chanel.
On OTT, it’s not about her or heroine, every single character is powerful and a hero, heroine in their own space.
When I came into the film industry, I was so naive and confused and had no idea about how a heroine should work.
I play characters that allow me to do lot more than just be a glamorous heroine.
I’m a heroine addict. I need to have sex with women who have saved someone’s life.
It’s true I was approached for ‘Heroine’ but I couldn’t do the film as the dates were clashing with Kamaleswar Mukherjee’s film ‘Meghe Dhaka Tara’ based on the life of Ritwik Ghatak, where I played the lead.
I believe that every single person attached to a film is a character and nothing more. I don’t categorize them as hero, heroine, etc.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus is just perfect in ‘Veep.’ She gets to show off the spiky claws beneath her patrician finesse. The obvious way to play ‘Veep’ would be to make Louis-Dreyfus a folksy heroine, one with more common sense or populist heart than her enemies. But she isn’t one.
Good looks may be enough for a heroine, but to become an artiste, you need at least a working knowledge of the language.
A lot of times, I was about to get a role, but then somebody called. The father or mother would call and a starlet would get it. If somebody is with someone and the heroine is his muse or girlfriend, then she would get the role. All this has happened to me.
All three girls in ‘Housefull 3,’ Jacqueline Fernandez, Lisa Haydon and Nargis, got along well. Usually when there is more than one heroine there is some friction. Not this time.
I can’t do the conventional heroine’s role.
A lot of what I was wanting to do in my work and what I have been doing has been about the unexpected… that unexpected situation of wanting to be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the same time.
I like ‘Girlhood’ because it has this universal feeling, and that’s also the project of the film, to bring very contemporaneous characters into the big fiction, and the classical idea of a heroine’s emancipation.
There are certain things I couldn’t write because they’re not intrinsic to my beliefs. For instance, I couldn’t write a hero or heroine who didn’t put children first.
I have done over 300 films of which I’ve played the heroine in 50.
Some felt my looks would not go down with the Bengali audience. They felt I was not photogenic. Others felt I was just what Bengali cinema needed when there was lack of glamour for heroine roles and there were few leading ladies around.
I would have loved to do a film like ‘Piku’ or ‘Neerja.’ But I never got a role where a woman played an authoritative role. In my time, the hero and the villain were both men. The heroine was only the victim.
I personally believe that I’m a very unconventional heroine. And for me to be cast in some very nice films and whatever little name I have made for myself, I feel proud of myself.
I know I was known as a ladies man and all that, but even the thought of holding my heroine’s hand made me break into a sweat.
The paranormal bad boy is usually a fiercely loyal partner for the heroine. Once his sights are set on her, he doesn’t notice other women, and he’s utterly unconcerned with what anyone else thinks of his choice.
In the ’80s, there was a fixed costume of a heroine, and not the physical costume, but this is what a heroine is, she is an art prop. She will look beautiful, support the hero, dance, get saved by hero. I didn’t ever aim to go there.
Here’s the thing about romance novels: The moment when the hero and heroine discover that they’re perfect for each other is often the moment when it’s them against the world.
I was amazed to realize that for many Westerners, Scheherezade was considered a lovely but simple-minded entertainer, someone who relates innocuous tales and dresses fabulously. In our part of the world, Scheherezade is perceived as a courageous heroine and is one of our rare female mythological figures.
There is no longer any pressure to play the heroine. So I can have fun and be the actor I want to be. I can look beyond the hairstyles and the clothes and concentrate on the acting.
In this country, if a woman wants to work, she has very little choice. After you cross the age suitable for a heroine, there is nothing in the middle; the next thing you do is you become a mother.
I had begun my career with emotional films – Rajasthani film ‘Bai Chali Sasariye.’ Later I did several films as a heroine, and made the audience cry a lot. I even did action films, where I would play a dacoit or a police officer.
To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.
I do gravitate toward 19th century writers, and I never mind being compared with some of the most memorable writers from that era. I mean, George Eliot is my absolute heroine.
She doesn’t do the things heroines are supposed to. Which is rather Jane Austen’s point – Fanny is her subversive heroine. She is gentle and self-doubting and utterly feminine; and given the right circumstances, she would defy an army.
Moana is definitely a Disney heroine. She’s wonderful, empowered, empowering.
Pages: 1 2
