Sara Ali Khan, like her famous parents (Amrita Singh and Saif Ali Khan), is nonchalantly honest. Exuding wisdom beyond her years, she lets us in on a secret. She may seem all confident and vivacious, but deep down, that’s her concealing her nerves better. The actress owns failure with as much integrity as success. In a candid chat with Bombay Times, Sara opened up on her life and beyond — right from relationships and highs and lows in her career, to her incredible weight loss journey and her forthcoming film Atrangi Re. Excerpts:

There’s a line in the trailer that has caught a lot of attention. ‘Agar ek baar, ek ladki ko dono (ladke) mil jayenge toh kya aafat aa jayegi!’ I was so excited to say this line because I thought it was path-breaking in a way. Why does it have to be this or that in life? Aanand ji (director Aanand L Rai) told me, it’s not a path-breaking line, and you won’t say it like that. Say it in the same way as any other line because only then will people relate to it. He didn’t want me to make it sound like I was giving a speech or a sermon. He explained how it was a genuine, innocent and simple thought.

When you truly believe in something, you don’t jatao it. If I want to have salad and pizza, why can’t I have both? Other than the indecisiveness, what I found most exciting about my character Rinku is her demeanour. She says these assertive, confident and strong things, but it’s all coming from a pure and innocent space. She seems unabashed, but she isn’t callous. If I were to compare, Rinku is not quite like me except for one thing, and this one similarity outweighs the differences. Like her, I may seem bubbly and display clarity of thought, but that’s on the exterior. In reality, I am extremely sensitive as a person. I just know how to conceal that side of me better with confidence. I grew up with a single mother (actress Amrita Singh) who understood early in life that if you have a soft shell, you will be crumpled easily. I idolize my mother and hope to be like her every day, so the strength to conceal the vulnerability comes from there.

Love is a very personal and subjective phenomenon. I do believe in one thing. To have any kind of love in your life, you need to love yourself first. It took me a while to realise that. The rest is different for different people.

Confidence for me is never about what I look like. That’s not real. You are who you are on the inside. That’s your identity. Baahar ka toh theek hai. Aap paanch pizza khaogay thoday motay lagogay, paanch ghanta bhagoge, patle lagogay. What you are on the inside is what matters the most. Also, it doesn’t matter to me what people say. You allow a troll to win when their comments affect you. You look in the mirror and say, mujhe farak nahi padta toh nahi padta. It’s unrealistic to believe that you can change how the world thinks. It would be great if we all woke up to being body positive, but that may not happen. The need for validation from other people is inevitable in our jobs, but you need to compartmentalize it. I mean no disrespect to anyone, but what they think of how I look does not matter to me. However, what you think of my acting does matter to me. That’s my job. I do films for the people and media. If they don’t like my work, then it’s a problem, and I need to work on it. That I will take seriously. But how I walk, look or what I wear is nobody’s business. That’s my life. I am proud of the fact that I have been able to segregate Sara, the actor, from Sara, the person.

Absolutely! They both have taught me to have a sense of balance. After Kedarnath and Simmba, I could have thought I’d arrived and after Love Aaj Kal, I could have locked myself in a room. I didn’t do either of those things. You cannot attach your self-worth to how your films fare. My job matters a lot to me, but if you stop mattering to yourself, job kaise kar paogay? My mom stopped working as a leading lady the year before I was born. She bagged the Filmfare Award for Aaina (1993) and called it quits. My father gave 17 flops, and then became somebody who won numerous awards later on, including the National Award for Hum Tum. He went on to do films like Omkara. I learnt from them that if your heart is in the right place and you try hard and mean well, you are sorted.

I do have butterflies in my stomach, but for other reasons. I haven’t had a release in a year. My last release was Coolie No 1. Honestly, it’s been two years since I have done a film that I can say I am really proud of. I started shooting for Atrangi Re two weeks after Love Aaj Kal was released, and that film was my first failure. With much love and compassion, Aanand ji told me that, ‘You cannot play on the back foot now. You are a confident girl, and I need that confidence to reflect in the performance. I want people to see that.’ He made me believe in myself at a time when I didn’t.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Love Aaj Kal’s failure taught me more than Kedarnath’s success. When Kedarnath released, I had no expectations. I didn’t know what would happen. I loved my job, but bhook nahi thi aur itna khaana mil gaya. In Love Aaj Kal, I wasn’t appreciated at all and rightfully so. But now I have that hunger.

I had a blast working with Imtiaz Ali sir on that film and films are ultimately a director’s medium. We make movies for the audience and media. If you guys didn’t like the movie, then it didn’t work. I should have been a bit more understated in my performance, but that wasn’t the brief given to me. It could have been different, but you learn. If a character didn’t connect with you, I have to accept the fact that maybe my pitch was unreal. Maybe I wasn’t emotionally convinced as an actor to pull that off. I am cognisant of my failure. I hope to learn from my mistakes and get better in the future. As far as criticism is concerned, it’s important to understand what didn’t work, but you cannot take it to heart and lose confidence.