Karisma Kapoor on her journey in Bollywood

Brut India

“We used to really work like crazy.” Karisma Kapoor spilled the tea on the tiresome shoot schedules and the flak she faced for her looks during her early days in Bollywood.  📹: Jagran Film Festival

Transcript

00:00It was a struggle. People were like,

00:02Oh, she looks like Randhir Kapoor without a moustache.

00:05She's too fair. She's pale. She has light eyes.

00:08As a young girl of 16, 17, to hear these comments,

00:12it was tough.

00:13There was a time in the 90s where I would do four or five shifts a day.

00:16The day your movie reaches that parda,

00:18you're nobody's daughter, granddaughter, anything.

00:22The audience will decide.

00:30How do you take this love?

00:36The adulation that you don't just have from your family members,

00:39but from everybody around. It's a universal emotion.

00:43Well, honestly, I'm very thankful and grateful.

00:46And I think that's the most important emotion that I feel.

00:50I'm ever grateful and thankful to all of you,

00:53including this generation, for all the love and for maybe,

01:00you know, acknowledging maybe the hard work because we used to really work like crazy.

01:07There was a time in the 90s when I would do four or five shifts a day.

01:11It was a very, very different era, a very different time.

01:15There were times when I was speaking dialogues from other movies on another set

01:19because I was like a zombie.

01:21I think it's been a gradual journey for me.

01:24I was so young. I was like 16, 17 years old, straight from school.

01:29I went to college for two months and then straight on a film set.

01:33So, yes, very protected background, just right there in front of the camera.

01:39So I think in those days, especially we didn't have Instagram

01:43and we didn't have Facebook and we didn't have YouTube.

01:46So we had to really, you know, work hard to reach the masses,

01:51you know, to reach the interiors of India apart from the cities.

01:55It was a struggle when I came, if I may say so, people were like,

02:00oh, she looks like Randhir Kapoor without a moustache.

02:03She's too fair. She's pale. She has light eyes. Will she be able to emote?

02:07So as a young girl of 16, 17, to hear these comments, it was tough.

02:12It was very difficult. But I was like, no, I have to have that focus.

02:18And my parents and my grandfather always told me, it's not going to be a bed of roses.

02:23You'll have to work very hard because the day your movie reaches that parda,

02:27you're nobody's daughter, granddaughter, anything. The audience will decide.

02:33So I had that determination and I was like, I have to do it.

02:37But it was a time of love and passion and movies were made on

02:42that passionate determination and instinct.

02:45So I kind of miss that also sometimes because, of course,

02:49everything's become so streamlined today and so professional.

02:53But that also had a different kind of magic to it.

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