Successful Actresses..

Hi, It’s me again, with another rumination. Bollywood is going to be quite a popular topic of mine, but in this blog entry. I’d like to compare and contrast Hollywood, and Bollywood, specifically the actresses. After that, I might go onto the differences between the models and the actresses in the respective countries.

Now. I believe in Hollywood, there are two relative cadres or groups of actresses. Actresses that look good on screen, so here we’re talking about the Megan Foxes, Scarlett Johanssones, Jessica Albas and so forth. Then you have the actresses who are watched not so much for the beauty but for the strength of their acting performance. I’d say Helena Bonham Carter, Dame Judi Dench and Marion Cotillard, this is all subjective of course. However, the truly successful actresses, the ones that become household names are the actresses who manage to straddle these two categories and excel in them. And here, you would talking about Angelina Jolie, Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts. The point being that, it not enough to have good looks, but you have to be able to build on these good looks, and be able to act well enough as well. This can be evidenced in Jolie’s recent movies Wanted and Changeling. One grossed 750 million, and the other brought her an Academy Award nomination.

Conversely, though in Bollywood, there are three categories in which an actresses has to perform in, since Bollywood also has song-dance routines included into its movies. Therefore there are you might say six groups of actresses, in Bollywood. The two mentioned above, and then the four other groups, which include looking good, and dancing well (the item girls, and some lesser actresses), just dancing well (background dancers or less popular item girls) as well as two other groups, which I would like to deal with separately. The other groups would be of course, looking good and acting well, and the highly coveted group of being able to do all three perfectly. The reason I want to deal with the former separately, is because very few actresses in Bollywood, can actually dance, to give the example of Bipasha Basu, but look good can act tolerably. Most popular actresses fit into this category, and it seems for this reason, this one other discipline, where one can pull out in Hollywood from the last ten years, actress who excel such as Jolie, Roberts, Bullock. One has to go back to the eighties and early nineties for the first such Bollywood actress. The one and only Madhuri Dixit, and then if you go even further back, Rekha. Sadly, since Madhuri there have only been pretenders to the throne. The one person coming closest being Kajol, however I do believe that her dancing let her down.

It just seems odd, that an industry, in which I place far greater value than in Bollywood, requires relatively less talent to succeed in. Bit strange…

Anyway, as a closing remark, I would like to highlight something I thought was quite weird. There is always been this undercurrent that Actresses shouldn’t marry, because once they do, their status as a sex symbol diminishes, and lose its lustre because of the fact that they have a husband, and kids, and the whole domestic image. Now, I was thinking that surely this should apply even more to models, since all they really have is their bodies, nothing else. But, I see is Heidi Klum being married have three babies and pregnant with the fourth, Adriana Lima, Karolina Kurkova, Gisele Bundchen all pregnant, and all four of them prominent models. Is being a model more secure than being an actress?

And how come, in the West, a model is proper career on its own, perhaps back in the East, being a model is just a stepping stone to a career in cinema? Strange, don’t you think?

State of Bollywood Actresses at the moment...

Now before I start, I would just like to make clear that this conversation, this soliquy commited to paper, are just my thoughts, and my thoughts only, not intended to be inflammatory or desultory in any way. I apologize in advance, however, because of some topics covered in this blog will quite select, and perhaps not part of general consensus. The topics will probably range from Film to Sport to my world view, as well as this, it will have a Indian slant to it, which as I realize may not be everyone’s cup of tea..

Anyway, disclaimer out of the way. We can get on to something proper, you know I was musing the other day, and a thought or a realization came to me about the Indian Film Industry, or Bollywood for short. Being quite an avid film fan, and an Indian who isn’t too anglicized to have forgotten our national language, I quite like Bollywood movies, and have grown up watching them. Now Bollywood has never actually been in my opinion, a bastion of talent by any means of the word. Formulaic love stories, dancing-around-trees song dance routines, and the inevitable corny moments that make people cringe the world over are just part and parcel of a hindi movie. However, one soon learns to disregard these moments, chalking them up to either inexperience or the culture gap between the Eastern and Western styles of filmmaking and consider the positive points about them. And, if one does do this then one starts appreciating Indian cinema, all the more. And with this appreciation comes the realization that Indian cinema has had many fine actors and actresses ranging from Smita Patil, to Jaya Bahaduri-Bachchan to Tabu, Kajol and Rani Mukherji on the actress side, as well as Dev Anand, Amitabh Bachchan, and Hrithik Roshan on the actor side.

However, as I say a realization struck me the other day. None of the current bollywood actresses can act with any conviction. People may disagree with me, but I would have to stand firm on this point. None of the current bollywood actresses can act, and when I say, I don’t mean the Aishwariya Rais, Preity Zintas and such that release a movie each year, and who have for one of reason or another have relativistically speaking, fallen out of public favour. I’m talking the new-gen actresses i.e Katrina Kaif, Deepika Padukone, Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra, Bipasha Basu, Neha Dhupia. Those who know Bollywood will have got the picture by now. And those you don’t, the best comparison I could possibly give is Megan Fox. Most of these actresses are in movies for the exact same reason she is, they look good. However, in the case of first two atleast Megan Fox can speak the language in which the film is, without any problems or guttural accents masking her pronunciation. I mean, seriously the bollywood industry has got to be falling down on its head, when Kareena Kapoor is the no. 1 actress. Her two claims to fame, her illustrious film family, and lest we forget, her willingness to strip down the barest of essentials in so called ‘glamourous’ roles. Glamorous roles of course meaning, movies where ‘fill-in-the-space’s legs are supposed to detract from the fact, that this movie has a paper thin plot. Katrina Kaif can’t even speak hindi properly, and she is acting, same with Deepika Padukone, and I could go on.

Conversely though, on the men’s side, the pool of talent seems to be in rude health. With youngsters such as Ranbir Kapoor, Imran Khan mixing with older and seasoned actors acting professionally for once such as Saif Ali Khan, Akshay Kumar, as well as the big man of Indian Cinema, Shri Amitabh Bachchan, still looming large on the film front. Credit must also be given here, even if I believe he is overrated, to Shah Rukh Khan, still coming out with new stuff.

This imbalance set me to wondering, why this was happening? Why were there so many talented bollywood actors, whereas on the other side, the dregs remained. Interesting question to think about, I think?