Lara Dutta Bhupathi talks about the reasons for her hiatus from Bollywood and why with the web boom, the role of female characters have become more interesting
Titas Chowdhury (HINDUSTAN TIMES; February 28, 2020)

Lara Dutta Bhupathi is looking forward to a new innings in her professional life. The actor, who decided to put her career “on the back burner” after the birth of her daughter Saira, is all set to foray into the digital space soon. Ask Lara about it and she says that meatier and layered female characters are the reason why the web fascinates her. “I love the fact that because of the boom in the digital space, more women are finally getting the opportunity to be writers and directors. Women-centric stories and layered characters for women are being conceived. All this while, invariably, female actors played the girlfriend, the wife or the romantic interest of the male lead and hardly had anything else to do. It’s incredible to see such fresh kind of writing and the projects that are now being made on the digital space,” says Lara.

The Housefull (2010) actor, who was crowned Miss Universe in 2000, marked her film debut with Andaaz in 2003. She feels “really fortunate” to not have been exposed to the dark underbelly of the Hindi film industry. “We’ve witnessed some incredible conversations that took place in the industry in the last few years, such as #MeToo and pay disparity. Being in the industry comes with its own share of challenges but apart from the regular challenges that I faced as an actor such as a film not doing well or missing out on a film, I don’t think I’ve ever really dealt with the ugly side of Bollywood,” says the 41-year-old.

She explains that the main reason of slowing down professionally was the dearth of quality scripts and characters. She says that good roles stop coming to female actors after they reach a certain age. “When I’m in my mid-thirties and I’m getting the same stereotypical roles that I got when I was in my twenties and early thirties, then there’s no challenge involved and that’s when there was dearth of work. That’s the time when you need to weigh the pros and cons and figure out what you want to really do. I thought that if I kept working, paychecks would keep coming in but that would take me away from my home and my kid. So, I didn’t want to do that. It isn’t just about working but also about the quality of work that you want to do,” she elaborates.

Giving a glimpse into a chock-a-block year ahead, Lara shares, “There are two big projects that my production house is working on. They’re being handled internationally. It has been two years of writing and putting the entire team together. This year suddenly looks very eventful.”