Taapsee Pannu: Long struggle before I play typical heroine

Taapsee Pannu, who is just two films old in the Hindi film industry, feels she needs to show versatility as an actress before becoming the quintessential Bollywood heroine.

Taapsee says she currently wants to concentrate on performance-oriented roles rather than running after the cliche “cute, bubbly” characters, which are anyway dominated by bigger female stars.

“Bollywood already has those quintessential girls who do love stories and play ‘sweet and cute’ kind of roles. There are so many of them who are much bigger names than me, market wise.

“So, I am left with acting-oriented roles. I need to keep acting well to reach a point where I can also do those ‘happy-go-lucky’ roles and feel like a big heroine,” Taapsee told PTI in an interview.

“Before that, I have to do the struggle of doing variety so that people see that I am a decent actor and I look decent enough to be placed as a typical heroine.”

The 28-year-old actress is happy that the upcoming list of her on-screen outings, including megastar Amitabh Bachchan-starrer “Pink”, will prove her acting credentials thanks to the diversity in characters.

“‘Pink’ is an intense thriller, which is going to show the audience a different side of me as an actor. Next, I am doing a love story, then there is ‘Ghazi’, where I am playing a Bangladeshi refugee. None of the roles that I am doing now are similar to each other. Bollywood has offered me crazy variety of roles.”

Talking about her experience of sharing screen space with Bachchan, Taapsee says she was excited to work with him.

“It was intimidating working with Mr Bachchan… I can remember the first shot with him. It was the easiest shot you can imagine. I had to just sleep. He was sitting and talking to one of the co-actors in the shot and I had to just lie down on the sofa and sleep.

“I had to give so many retakes for that shot because I couldn’t keep my eyes still, they were always flickering. I was excited, not nervous.”

‘Ghazi’, Taapsee says, it is India’s first submarine movie, based on the true incidents of the mysterious sinking of PNS Ghazi, a Pakistan Submarine, by INS Rajput (D141) during the Indo-Pak war of 1971.

“‘Ghazi’ is complete. It’s a bilingual, Telgu and Hindi.

It is going to be India’s first submarine film. Not many people know there was a submarine in Pakistan called Ghazi which sank in Indian waters during 1971 war. We have shot 75 per cent of the film inside a submarine.”

Inputs by PTI

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