From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
You don't pick an aesthetic in abstract – you need to have a core point, a core reason to make a film, and the form of aesthetic springs from that necessity. Everything has to relate to that core intention.
In 2011, she participated in the Indian reality television series Big Boss. She hosts the Indian reality show Splitsvilla. In 2012 she made her Bollywood debut in Pooja Bhatt's erotic thriller Jism 2 (2012) and shifted her focus to mainstream acting which was followed up with Jackpot (2013), Ragini MMS 2 (2014) and Ek Paheli Leela (2015).
Starting in theatre can work both ways. I've seen theatre actors who are too dramatic for film, because they have the tendency to want to reach-out to that last member of the audience. That said, theatre gives you this confidence to perform and for me, it gave me a kind of greed in terms of the kind of roles I was looking for.
When it came to Avatar… James Cameron's track record was just second to none- phenomenal. The creative vision he had to that film, tied to Fox's commitment in the movie and the advances in technology made it seem- at the time- quite an easy decision.
I was 5 years old when I went to see it and when I came back, I remember thinking 'that's exactly what I'm going to do, I want to be a film-maker, I want to make people disappear, reappear, sing on screen and make beautiful love story.' That was the moment I decided, and I haven't looked back since.
Success in entertainment isn't just about making hits—it's about taking risks, pushing boundaries, and never losing sight of the human element that makes stories matter.
In No One Killed Jessica (2011), a true crime tale of a woman searching for her sister's killer, Balan (known to her many fans as simply Vidya) proved that a film without a male lead could be a commercial success.
If you truly immerse yourself in a role, it's akin to spontaneously adopting an accent – suddenly, you find yourself expressing thoughts that seem to emerge from an unexplored facet of your personality. This latent potential has always existed within us.
We're tackling serious subjects like life, death, and existential questions, but in a lighthearted way. This approach makes heavy topics more approachable. There's a cultural instinct to revere those who have passed, as if they know something we don't. Yet, in our show, we flip this idea on its head.
You can have many great actors but you have very few who really become movie stars. It is that indefinable quality of someone who becomes iconic that people want to come and watch regardless of the type of film they're in.
My training as an actor prepared me for caregiving. As actors, we show up ready to explore what might happen without a clear sense of the outcome. This requires you to be nimble, flexible, and curious, qualities I had to embrace daily as a caregiver.
On the one hand, Excel's oeuvre comprises of a string of box-office hits like Dil Chahta Hai, Don, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Talaash & Fukrey. Alongside these blockbusters, Excel has also launched avant garde ventures like Gully Boy, India's first hip hop film and the official entry to the Academy Awards this year and Inside Edge, India's first original series on Amazon Prime Video that was nominated for the coveted International Emmy Awards under the Best Drama category in 2018.