Wednesday, Feb 22, 2017

Listen up ladies, Bollywood actress Kangana Ranaut has a message for you.

“It’s perfectly fine to be selfish… We should learn to live for ourselves and take care of ourselves,” she told Gulf News tabloid! in an interview.

Coming from any other star, these words might have sounded hollow. But the Indian National Award-winning actress, whose Second World War epic Rangoon is up for release on February 23 in the UAE, is someone who practices what she preaches.

The quintessential outsider, Ranaut comes from a small town in Himachal Pradesh and doesn’t belong to a Bollywood dynasty. However, her humble beginnings didn’t stop her from winning National Awards for acting in blockbusters including Fashion and Queen, or being frank about relationships that went bust. She often jokes about her alleged exes — actor Hrithik Roshan being one of them — and speaks bravely about how hostile show business can be.

“Women who don’t speak up need to take care of themselves. Women are pre-conditioned to think that they are born to give emotional care to all those around them. In the pursuit of being the one who nurtures, they are often unjust and uncaring towards themselves. We should learn to live for ourselves,” said Ranaut. According to her, being morally wired to think that keeping your parents, husband, siblings and home happy doesn’t help women.

“You just need to get rid of those traps that have been built over the years… You are responsible for your own happiness and you cannot expect anyone else to make you happy. I know it isn’t so easy to be objective and rational about life, but remember you can hope to be happy too,” Ranaut added.

Her words gain credence because it’s rare for actors to deviate from their films during press junkets. But Ranaut is comfortable answering any question that’s thrown at her. Asked what she would have done differently in life, she says that she would have gotten professional help with how to put on make-up and carry herself in public.

A decade ago, Ranaut was the constant subject of ridicule and mockery. Her accent while speaking in English wasn’t polished and she was too liberal with her make-up. She ended up looking pasty in photographs and gawkish during interviews.

“I dropped out of school when I was very young to pursue films. When I made some money, I went to a film school and learnt about it. It taught me that you can learn at any point in your life. But it took me ten years to reach that point… I remember a professor telling me that you need to learn the rules of the game first in order to break them,” said Ranaut, who’s the product of her circumstances. She learnt to navigate the treacherous terrains of fame, wealth and show business through the tedious trial and error method.

So what would she have told her young, naive self now?

“I would have told my own self to do a bit more grooming and not depend on circumstances to teach me. I took so long to get groomed. I did my own make-up and hair for years. All I had to do was do a course on learn how to apply make-up, take lessons on how to speak and conduct yourself in a crowd. I just relied on myself and life to teach me,” she said.

But she cleans up well. In her new film, Ranaut plays femme fatale Miss Julia, whose affections transfer from her rich mentor (Saif Ali Khan) to a soldier (Shahid Kapoor). She plays the two men like a fiddle with an alluring mix of vulnerability and steely will.

“There are shades to Julia that’s intriguing. Deep down, she is very insecure. She’s very dependant on her mentor and that’s where the film begins. But she’s also craving for love and my character gets her arc when she meets Shahid Kapoor’s character. She’s a scared woman who wants to be loved and it shows what happens when she falls in love with another man,” said Ranaut.

In the trailers, Miss Julia is shown as a feisty and fearless woman who uses her sexuality to get things done.

“She’s an opportunist and she’s in a relationship which is highly need-based with Saif’s character. Because she is being mentored by him, she uses him to learn things from him. Come to think of it, she uses both of them at some point… So perhaps there’s a vicious and a vulnerable side to her,” Ranaut said.

Directed by Vishal Bharadwaj, who gave us seminal films such as Omkara and Haider, Rangoon explores India’s role in the Second World War.

“Such a film of this scale and theme doesn’t come every week or everyday. It’s a love story set in a Broadway-style format… Usually his films are issue-based and love stories are just in the background. This time around in Rangoon, the love story is in the forefront and the issue is in the background. It’s an exciting love story that is intense and not some run-of the-mill contemporary love story,” she added.

Rangoon could also help viewers brush up on a part of history that’s not often explored.

“Lots of people know about Mahatma Gandhi and Subhash Chandra Bose’s role in history and how they fought for us… We will tell you [what] went right or wrong during the Second World War. There are patriotic undertones to Rangoon, but it’s a love story of two lives at its core,” the actress said.

Like any respectable epic war romance, the thrill of forbidden love and the politics of class systems will also come into play.

“Julia meets the love of her life at the wrong time in history,” Ranaut said. “It’s not like today’s character, where you meet a person and you have a relationship with them... or your issues aren’t something like having a bad hair day. Rangoon explores issues that plagued the larger numbers. Julia may have found her perfect man, but the time was never on her side.”

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Don’t miss it!

Rangoon releases in the UAE on February 23rd.

Did you know?

Ranaut isn’t a fan of acting in Hollywood films and isn’t impressed with what they have to offer Indian talents:

“I am not keen on Hollywood. I get so many American and international scripts, but I want to do roles that benefit Indian films. Hollywood markets have completely crashed so they are just sinking their teeth by using these actresses,” said Ranaut.

She is also pragmatic about the reach she might achieve in foreign markets.

“If I go to Germany tomorrow, I can’t hope to compete with German stars and their entertainment industry… They have their own culture and role models and we cant match up to do that.”

By Manjusha Radhakrishnan, Senior Reporter

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