Bollywood star Sushmita Sen revealed that she was once considered ‘difficult’ for sticking to fixed shoot timings and leaving the set on time, even when male co-stars arrived late. She pointed out that with the ‘Khans’ of Bollywood, discussing shoot details wasn’t expected from actresses. But Sushmita’s disciplined approach made her stick to fixed working hours.
In an interview with Siddharth Kannan, Sushmita said, “When I joined the industry, if you have a film with one of the Khans or one of the major A-list actors, you don’t talk about shift time and number of days and all. You just bend backwards and do the film. But I started asking for eight hours, ten hours with makeup and hair specifically. I will come on time and will leave on time. It’s a system I follow even today. I will never be late, but then I will leave on time. So first, everyone had a problem with that attitude, they had so much to say, ‘Attitude de rahi hai, samajhti kya hai apne aap ko (She is showing attitude. What does she think of herself?) Who works like this, blah blah blah.’”
But then a filmmaker hired her with those terms and realised it was a cost-effective way of working. The actor added, “Then somebody very audaciously hired me with those terms and realised that because of me, the production was saving money as everything was happening on time.”
Sushmita Sen didn’t change her rule for Amitabh Bachchan too
Sushmita mentioned that even when she worked with Amitabh Bachchan, Paresh Rawal, and Akshay Kumar in the film Aankhen (2002), she left from the set as per her shift timing. “I would fold my hands and say, ‘Sir, my day is done’. Not to offend anyone, but to follow a discipline,” shared Sushmita.
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Sushmita said, “That might have backfired then, and a lot of people were like, ‘She’s difficult to work with’. But I was like even if the actor is late by six hours, I am ready to wait. I’ll put on full hair and makeup, sit down and wait. But when it’s six o’clock, it’s my pack-up time, I leave.”
However, despite people’s opinions of her, Sushmita managed to work on her terms. Even today, she follows the same rule of working for eight hours and today people “respect” her for this. “It’s taken me 30 years for people to respect that time is how we measure life. You cannot waste someone’s time,” she concluded.
On the work front, Sushmita was recently seen on the web show Taali. Directed by Ravi Jadhav, the show Sushmita playing transgender activist Shreegauri Sawant.
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