Originally posted by: Justmoi
I do agree that Kat is the exception to this theory. She is a perfect example of a flowerpot career where her looks and her dancing is important in her career. But if it was that easy to have one BW will be littered with careers like that. She stands alone in that.
In the case of Ash shas worked in multiple industries and you can see the work there. Kat has worked in Malayalam too, with Mammoty. Ash has worked with Mammoty in Tamil. It was early in their careers and you can see the quality of work with a giant like Mammoty. Ash's career is a average work with sparks of good work. But I still stand by my theory that the audience would have weeded out bad work. Kat did something right to have that 13 year career be it dancing, glamor . You just cannot have that length of a career without having something to appeal to an audience.
Sorry for jumping in but yeah, Kat is a good argument in favour of the exception tbh. But Kat's popularity should also be situated in a definite social context. The overall talent pool of mainstream actresses has become more watered down by generation and Kat was arriving at the perfect time when India was enamoured by a surging trend of white/mixed actresses in Bollywood. Consider that along with movies of the phase lacking solid female roles and increasingly focusing on the male narrative, Kat was kinda poised to become the face of a transitional phase in Bollywood which saw its culmination and fall in numerous male-oriented films of 2000's. This sociological context was kinda fuelled by her connection to some of the biggest names in Bollywood like Salman, Ranbir and she blew up like nobody else.
The white actress fascination that brought Kat and legions of other trash actresses like Amy, Sunny, Claudia, Jacqueline, Nargis, Elli and so on has been trending down for quite some time with none of them succeeding in mainstream. Kat was kinda the harbinger of this trend and defined a phase of Bollywood movies which was probably not going to stay permanent.
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