‘Money never motivated me’

Gorgeous Bipasha Basu talks about her journey as an actress and as an individual through the 14 years she has spent in the Indian film industry so far

Bipasha Basu might have been tagged Bollywood’s ‘Horror Queen’ but she begs to differ. “I should be termed ‘Thriller Queen’ actually, since I’ve done some 30 thrillers over the course of my career so far. Five supernatural films really isn’t a lot. Think about it,” she reasons and then adds as an afterthought, “but anyway, I don’t mind being Queen of anything as long as I’m Queen!” In the capital to promote her upcoming release, Alone, she looks back over her 14-year-old career in the Indian film industry so far and shares with us how grateful she feels for everything that has come her way through it.

“When I first entered the industry, I was a brat. I didn’t understand the concept of working every day. My manager at the time, Jatin Rajguru, had handled actors who already belonged to filmy families and therefore had lives that were all about films. I had come in from a modeling background and would suddenly up and say, okay I want to go to Goa, lie on the beach and tan. And he would look at me incredulously and ask me why on earth did I want to tan a shade darker than I already was I used to do things like switching off my phone and taking off, leaving him wondering where I had vanished,” she laughs and reveals that Vikram Bhatt has had a tremendous role to play in guiding her towards a better, more responsible way of conducting herself. “Over the years, he really pulled my ears and told me that I needed to seriously respect the opportunities I was being given.

I remember, while shooting for Raaz I had expressed a desire to go back to college because I was bored and had already done one successful film inAjnabee.

He explained to me that there are people who really, really want what I’m getting the chance to do, so I should think a thousand times before throwing it away like that. I became much more professional with time, therefore, and grew to love the medium. Money never excited me and was never my motivation anyway. Today, I love what I’m doing and am not the actress who just comes on set, gives her shots and leaves. I’m the actress who is completely involved in the entire filmmaking process. I take my own decisions and make my own mistakes. That’s where these 14 years have brought me” she shares.

As she pointed out herself, she has done several thrillers along the course of her career and some of them have had her delving into grey shades of characters that she has often admitted are the most challenging for her to portray. She points out that they have also been catalysts to a wider learning process as an individual as she reveals, “The darkest film I’ve done in my entire career is Raaz 3, where I was playing this decaying actress who will go to any lengths to hold on to her waning stardom. She was jealous, dark and evil while I’m personally a very secure person, content with what I have. I would see people in the industry with insecurities like her and just not understand why that was so. But after having pushed myself to play her, I have today actually come to understand people around me much better than I did before. That’s another thing this medium has given me. To play certain characters, I have also had to tap into aspects of my own self that I didn’t know existed inside me.

And that has been such a revelation sometimes!”