Veteran actress Sharmila Tagore and her female contemporaries had a tough time shooting in their heyday without facilities like vanity vans or the large entourages provided to stars today.

Sharmila says, “These days, there is a war over vanity vans. The size of the vanity van symbolizes how big or small a star you are. These days, vans have three to four sections where one can have meetings, get ready, and sleep there. We didn’t miss having vanity vans, except when we had to use the washroom.”

The actress recalls, "The studio bathrooms were awful. R K Studios, Mehboob Studio and Rajkamal Studio had big rooms with clean bathrooms, but Natraj and other smaller ones were bad."

Having no air-conditioners back then, the huge fans at the studios were another concern for leading ladies of the yesteryears.

She recalls, "We had a tough time during the rains and Mumbai is always hot and humid so the weather would ruin our hairdos too. We had huge fans that would ruin our hairdos and we would have to keep redoing them. We did not have air conditioned studios except for Famous Studios back then. While shooting outdoors came with it's own sets of challenges, we had different concerns while shooting at studios."