Surveen Chawla has been weaving magic with her performances on Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa. But her journey to stardom hasn’t been all that easy. In an interesting piece for The Quint, Subhash K. Jha has highlighted the ups and downs of her life in the industry. Here are some excerpts:
I was propositioned, though luckily I had the strength to turn down the offer to be ‘nice’ to the director even if it meant losing a plum role.
I’ve never faced such sleazy offers in the Hindi film industry… This happened in Tamil cinema where I had already auditioned and bagged an important role… The director had his friend call and make the offer for me to sleep with the director. The friend told me it would only be until the film was made. I said, thanks but no thanks.
Previously, while talking about casting couch during another interview, she had said:
Don’t remind me of those phone calls and text messages. I wasn’t game for it. I will wait for the right kind of work. If I have it in me, everything will fall in place. You need a bit of luck too in this industry.
She also shared how she only received offers to do ‘bold’ roles after her debut film:
I don’t know if my screen image makes me look like an easy target. But I have to say, I was offered a whole lot of supposedly bold and sexy roles after I did Hate Story 2. This industry slots and tags you… After Hate Story, I was flooded with cheesy, salacious roles. I was labelled bold. I could have given in to the temptation of doing these roles. It was money that I urgently needed to live in Mumbai.
I was staying as a paying guest where I was literally thrown out in the middle of the night because I used to return home at 2 am, and even later.
You can read the entire piece here.