Actors who’ve worked in foreign films say that they sometimes do face a slight bias in Bollywood
Juhi Chakraborty (HINDUSTAN TIMES; July 31, 2020)

When A R Rahman said that his filmography in Bollywood has become sparse because of a gang spreading rumours about him, filmmaker Shekhar Kapur pointed out to that an Oscar “is the kiss of death in Bollywood”. This claim was later supported by Oscar winning sound engineer Resul Pookutty, who shared how he had gone through near breakdown as “nobody was giving me work in Hindi films and regional cinema held me tight” after he won the Oscar. So, is international acclaim really a death knell for an artiste in Bollywood?

Nimrat Kaur, who has starred in international shows such as Homeland and Wayward Pines, feels there definitely are misconceptions about actors working in West.

“Sometimes, people shy away from bringing a project to me because they think they can decide things for me. They think that because I have worked in Homeland, I won’t take up their projects. But that does not matter to me. In my case, I have to tell people that I don’t live in LA, USA and can do projects here,” she shares.

Adil Hussain, the winner of the best actor award at the Norwegian National Awards back in 2018 for What Will People Say, has done other international films such as Life of Pi, The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2012) and was also a guest star on the latest third season of Star Trek: Discovery. He says, “They may think, ‘oh these people are of a different league and they don’t want to work with us’. Or they may think we are too expensive or too arrogant. But nobody has asked me that since I am doing an international film, will I ever be interested in an Indian film. I work in films of all languages in India.”

While filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri does not want to delve into the statement made by Kapur and Pookutty, he believes that there is indeed a culture of isolation. “Anupam Kher went to Hollywood and he does not get much work here anymore,” he says.

But filmmaker Rima Das, whose film Village Rockstars was India’s official entry for the Oscars 2018, in the Best Foreign Language Film Category, begs to differ. “My journey is very different. I self-produced films and haven’t worked with studios yet so I can’t really say whether international acclaim hampers your chances in India. In fact, after the international acclaim people started paying more attention to my films and it opened new windows in terms of marketing and distribution for me,” she says.

Many have even contested that mediocrity will always be threatened and intimidated by brilliance and that is why many who work in the West, no longer get the kind of roles they used to in Bollywood. But trade analyst Atul Mohan does not agree with Kapur. “Global recognition can never bring any hurdles to one’s profile. And anyway, how many of international awards do we even manage to get. Don’t forget how well Irrfan was doing, in India as well as abroad,” he says.