Celebrating The Beautiful Lara Dutta’s Birthday

She was named Lara after the heroine in her mother’s favourite film Dr Zhivago. In an industry of hyper-hypocrisy she was honest. No false smiles, no sucking up to directors and heroes. No compromises, Priyanka Chopra and Lara Dutta started off together in my friend Suneel Darshan’s Andaaz. Between the two, I thought Lara was going to be the big star. She had the better role in Andaaz and she went on to give some good performances in films like Dilli Chalo, Billu and David. But her career never took off in the way it should have.

Lara was seen as Priyanka’s competition at the start, like Sridevi and Jaya Prada, Hema Malini and Leena Chandavarkar. Sadly, Lara had to be the Jaya Prada in the race with Priyanka.

Lara had spoken about the comparisons once during an interview with me in the past. “We competed on the same level for the Miss India contest though I had been modelling before. We trained and won together and even won international crowns in the same year. I could not have hoped for a better costar. The makers of Andaaz wanted to cash in on Miss Universe and Miss World, that’s me and Priyanka Chopra, being cast together. Both of us came from an ‘out-there’ field like modelling and we were comfortable with our bodies. We knew what we were doing and wearing. No compromises were pushed on us. I can only speak for myself and say I was very comfortable with whatever I wore in Andaaz. I wore what today’s college girls wear.”

Did Lara see Priyanka as competition? Lara reply was candid but cautious. “We are very different actresses. She has different aspirations. I want to build a base for myself as an actress so that, tomorrow, a filmmaker will have the confidence to cast me in a role like Nargis’ in Mother India. I don’t want to burn myself out. I don’t want to be seen in every second film. I don’t want the audience to say, ‘Oh no, she’s in this one too.”

Surely, there must have been a competitive edge? “There was! But that helped both of us perform better. And I would much rather compete with Priyanka, whose career has grown alongside mine. Besides, she’s very talented. We advised each other like two veteran actresses whenever the other would mess up a shot.”

Lara’s interest in acting started early. “I have been involved with theatre since I was 13. I never seriously thought I would get into movies though I had every intention of continuing with theatre. To be brutally honest, when you win a title like Miss Universe, your entire life turns topsy-turvy for one year. Coming from Bangalore, I suddenly saw a large world of opportunities open up before me, movies being one of them. Again, to be honest, I had no idea what the Indian movie industry was like. What I heard made me skeptical. But it was also a chance to go forward in life.”

Entering Bollywood was not easy. “It took me a year-and-a-half to sign a movie after I gave up my title. As Miss Universe, I made a huge effort to keep at least some areas of my life to myself. The film industry requires you to drop all inhibitions, demolish all the walls built around you. It took me a while to get used to the constant glare. Know what? Now I love every bit of it. When I came in, I hadn’t really done my homework. I had only heard about Subhash Ghai and Yash Chopra…that’s it. I went purely by gut instinct when I signed my first film Andaaz. I’ve been finding myself as an actor. And, I love the process. I am new around here. There were lots of things initially that didn’t make sense. Certain things upset me. I can’t change the industry, so I learnt to adapt. As I got involved with the whole business of moviemaking, things started falling into place.”

Lara rarely got the roles that did justice to her beautiful personality. One such film was Chalo Dilli in 2011. Chalo Dilli is a film with a lot of heart, and some soul. There are practically just two characters in the skilfully-conceived plot about two mismatched travellers on the road from Mumbai to Delhi via Jaipur and places in Rajasthan you had never known about until now.

That the two seemingly-incompatible travelling companions are played by Lara Dutta and Vinay Pathak is a stroke of good fortune that takes the story much further than it would have gone in the hands of two other actors. Before any more comment on the captivating product, let’s speak right away about Vinay Pathak whose unorthodox personality and talent have been on the look-out for suitable resting places since the unforeseen success of Bheja Fry four years ago.

In Chalo Dilli, Pathak as the Dilliwala with heart many sizes larger than his luck and bank balance sheds so much solar energy into the plot you feel grateful that someone out there in the mediocrity-infested entertainment industry looks out for talent like Pathak’s.

And Lara Dutta? Quite easily one of the most beautiful and underrated actresses of our times. She’s smart sexy savvy and supremely confident. What stopped her from cracking the top rungs of stardom? You think about this quite frequently while watching her make all the correct moves as the hoity-toity investment banker who misses her flight but gains so much in terms of human experience that you wish we would all miss our flight if we don’t want to miss the bus as complete human beings.

Not happy with uninspiring roles being offered, actress Lara Dutta wrote a script for herself in 2008! Lara felt sriptwriters in Bollywood weren’t writing anything indepth for a woman. Invariably the scripts glorify the hero while the heroine is the love interest. And the women-oriented films were half-baked attempts at feminist statements.Interestingly, Lara hasn’t written a woman-oriented film. It had equal space for the male and female protagonists. That script never went into filming.

Someone should write a role specially for Lara of an urbane 30-plus woman finding herself in the corporate jungle and bossing over an organization filled with men. She would nail that one. She would be the best choice for the desi version of The Intern.

Did Akshay Kumar recommend Lara Dutta for her debut film Andaaz? Director Suneel Darshan clarifies, “Lara Dutta wasn’t recommended to me by Akshay. She seemed to think so as they had shot together for a Filmfare cover.”

However, Suneel says the decision to cast Lara in Andaaz was his alone. “My decision to break out of the comfortable space and try unconventional casting led to me requesting Mr. Bali who was Mr Akshay Kumar’s secretary to connect me with her since she was in Bangalore due to her Dad’s illness.”

Working with Lara was a very pleasant experience for Suneel. “She was a professional and I don’t recall any unpleasant experiences in either Andaaz or Dosti Friends Forever.”

Speaking somewhat sarcastically on how Akshay saved Lara’s life during the shooting of Andaaz, Suneel says, “I guess Akshay Kumar holds a record for having saved the highest number of actresses from casualties while filming & perhaps this was yet another feather in his cap.”

About the much-hyped rivalry between Lara and Priyanka Chopra (back then without Jonas) Suneel observes, “The difference between Lara and Priyanka can be summed up as this: Lara was supremely confident while Priyanka was obsessively determined to succeed. There was never any rivalry between them. They were not great friends. But they liked and respected one another. That whole rivalry was media made marketing manufacture. Both the debutantes had equally well-defined roles. Both were expected to become superstars. But Priyanka raced ahead. She was definitely the more ambitious between the two.”