Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
She starts with a disclaimer: “No personal questions”. But quickly dismisses it. “Thank god I’m past the stage where I began every interview with that line,” says Raveena Tandon. A speaker at the afternoon session of Screen’s 63rd anniversary celebrations at Express Towers, in Mumbai, on September 25, she set the mood with some humour. In conversation with Screen editor Priyanka Sinha Jha at the Big Picture, Tandon shared her experiences on being a woman in a male-dominated industry. She was also joined by actors Pallavi Joshi, Anjana Sukhani, Urvashi Rautela and film editor Deepa Bhatia. She confessed that her films with Chi Chi (Govinda) were so similar that even she couldn’t tell them apart. “When I started acting, I didn’t know whom to please: the producer so that he offers you good money, the masses, or do you work for yourself?” says Raveena. One day, while shooting in Mauritius dressed in a mini-skirt with two pony tails, she looked at herself in a mirror. “That’s when I decided to take myself seriously,” she says. Tandon signed the first “serious movie” she was offered, Ram Gopal Varma’s Shool and “found herself”. She then decided to strike a balance with her choices: if she signed Dulhe Raja and Bade Miyan Chote Miyan, she also did Aks and Daman.
About women in the film industry, Tandon spoke of how there weren’t many roles for an actress in the ’90s. “But women are being offered wonderful roles today, as in The Lunchbox or Shab (her upcoming movie with Onir),” she says. In the latter, Tandon plays a married woman having an affair with two people. She’s also part of Bombay Velvet, where she is a jazz singer.
While she finds the variety of roles exciting today, Tandon feels the pressure to look glamorous is more than ever. “If Kajol, Manisha or I were to start out today, we would be asked to lose weight, look different. Actors are made to feel conscious of how they look every second. We’ve come so far in our cinema, but this is one aspect in which we has taken us a step backwards,” she says.
