Rani Mukherji
Her smile wins her hearts. Her acting skills bring her awards. In a free-wheeling interview, Rani Mukerji talks to Amy Fernandes about what it means to be a star.
She's hopping mad. Someone's invaded her privacy again and you know, this just won't do. One would think when you're a star like Rani Mukerji, invasion of privacy is routine. But, "no, not for me," she says, "I'm a very private person and I can handle what happens to me, but not to my family.''
She dotes on her mother and father, who in the span of a few hours I am with her, have called to make sure she's fine. She would be. She's in this spanking new office of hers in Juhu, the Sunset Boulevard of Mumbai. Her shelves are lined with awards. Did she ever think she was going to be a star this big? "No," she says. "Entering films never entered my head. But I enjoyed the film world as a bystander since my dad was with Filmalaya and he made sure that we, my brother and I, both had very normal lives. We weren't even allowed to watch TV."
Nobody thought she would make it to films, not her friends, not herself. They thought her brother Raja, who was more of an extrovert than her, might have gone in that direction. "I thought after school, I'd go to college and then marry and have two kids and that would be that." So when did this about-turn happen? ''Well,my dad was making a few Bengali films and he would take us with him to Calcutta, now Kolkata.At one of these shoots, I gave a mahurat shot and forgot all about it."
However, Salim Khan, of Javed-Salim fame, had seen something in her in the mahurat role she did for her aunt in West Bengal and offered her a foot in the door. Even then she wasn't too sure she wanted to take it, but her mother was clearer in her ambitions for her daughter. "Take it," she said, "after all, such an opportunity does not knock on everybody's door." That made sense and she said "Yes."
She signed up for a crash course at Roshan Taneja's acting classes. She learned to read scripts, to improvise, to innovate and yet, when she was presented with her first scene, replete with glycerin tears streaming down her face, one part of her said, "Hey, what's this?" and another part of her, when she saw the rushes, said, "Hey it wasn't so bad; it was easy."
Of course, now that she is an actor, the critics keep a close tab. How does she handle the lows of a film that may not have hit the box office highs? "Luckily for me, it's been a long while since the audiences have not liked my films, but yes, I do watch the film. I analyse it and see where it could have worked better. But I am also very careful about the films I do. When I read a script, I ask myself, 'Is this a film I would kill to watch?' If the answer is 'Yes', I go ahead and do it."
Of course, now that she's deep into an industry that she once never even dreamed she would be part of, she is deeply grateful. ''I'm lucky to be in a job I love. To me, that is my greatest achievement. I've learned to embrace the good things and ignore the bad."
Last question. Every actor has a peak. What happens when the lights dim and the adulation fades and the queen has to step down? "I don't believe in shelf life. I believe if you're really good, you'll be working even when you're 80." So Rani, we'll see you at 80.
Shiv Shakti
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