logo
Nimrat Kaur opens up about financial struggles before The Lunchbox: ‘There were days when I was very sad'

Nimrat Kaur opens up about financial struggles before The Lunchbox: ‘There were days when I was very sad'

Indian Express3 days ago

Actress Nimrat Kaur, who was recently seen on Jio Hotstar's show Kull, appeared on SCREEN's Dear Me Season 2. During the conversation, Nimrat reflected on her journey and opened up about her struggling phase. She spoke about dealing with uncertainty and the anxiety of not knowing when her next paycheck would come. Nimrat also admitted that she isn't a thick-skinned actor and often finds herself affected by judgments directed at her.
Looking back at her struggles, Nimrat shared, 'Struggles are unending, and they will exist lifelong. Back when I started, the struggle was different. There was no surety that the reason for which I came to Mumbai would fructify. Will I be able to earn some money through acting? These were the initial questions. After I came here, I got some music videos in 2-3 months. I did a lot of ad films, and then Lunchbox came my way. I also did theater for 4-5 years. At different points in life, I had to struggle with different things.'
Also Read: Nimrat Kaur says people are 'unsettled' in marriages that are a front; recalls family pressure to 'settle down' during her struggling days
Nimrat Kaur also spoke about a phase when her finances were running low. The actor said, 'Sometimes I would get worried where my next pay cheque would come from? Am I good enough? Should I go back? Do people like seeing me in what I do? Before Lunchbox, there was a point where I didn't know what I would do ahead. While doing theater, there was a time when my bank balance had fallen very low. It was very difficult to understand where money would come from. There was a lot of fear, and returning home in a situation like that is a different kind of humiliation.'
'There were days when I was very sad, low, things were very difficult, challenging. I would cry, feel lonely, but there was a voice inside me that said, 'Don't give up,'' she added.
When asked whether she had always been strong-headed or merely appeared that way, Nimrat responded, 'I don't do it publicly, but that doesn't mean I don't go through a hard time. To be in on somebody's vulnerability is a privilege; it's not something anyone can and should have access to.'
A post shared by SCREEN (@ieentertainment)
'Anyway, the profession I am in puts me out in ways that sometimes I don't even want to. It's not something I wish for. It is a self-defense mechanism. I choose not to react, flare up, or express myself in an unwanted way. Some things remain forever, and thanks to the internet, it's like a landmine you are walking on. Anything you say can be blasted at any time. It can be made to look a certain way, and whatnot. As the audience, everybody is entitled to an opinion on my work, but everything else. It's not like I am completely immune to it or strong about it, or thick-skinned; in fact, I am the opposite. The complications of a childhood has made me a certain way. I choose my battles now. I don't want to take on issues that I have nothing to do with or that I can have no control over,' added Nimrat, during the interview held at Angry Sardar Restaurant in Andheri, Mumbai.
Nawaz Kochra is an enthusiastic entertainment journalistic for the last 9 years, he has been a known face and successfully worked with some big publications. At IndianExpress.com, Nawaz majorly covers TV and OTT and also does video interviews. Having the best conversations with celebrities is what Nawaz loves. ... Read More

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Aditya Roy Kapur says he doesn't understand ‘situationship', calls himself ‘old school' as he lists out red flag behaviour: ‘Someone who has a prison record'
Aditya Roy Kapur says he doesn't understand ‘situationship', calls himself ‘old school' as he lists out red flag behaviour: ‘Someone who has a prison record'

Indian Express

time4 hours ago

  • Indian Express

Aditya Roy Kapur says he doesn't understand ‘situationship', calls himself ‘old school' as he lists out red flag behaviour: ‘Someone who has a prison record'

Anurag Basu directed Metro In Dino's trailer was released in Mumbai on Wednesday. At the film's grand trailer launch event in Mumbai, the actors opened up about the lessons they have learnt from love. Aditya Roy Kapur shared his take on terms used to describe relationships, and Sara Ali Khan also shared that she does not believe in things like 'situationships.' Aditya and Sara shared their take on terms like situationship, benching, breadcrumbing. Aditya said, 'I don't even understand what the term situationship means, I am old school like that.' Sara added, 'To each their own, but I don't believe in situationship or any others.' Aditya also spoke on red flags and green flags in a relationship and said, 'For me, a red flag would be someone who has gotten a prison record. If they land up in your hall with suitcases, it might be a problem. And someone being kind is a green flag for me. That is important because if you are planning to see someone for a long time and end up being in all kinds of situations, but if they are kind its a green flag.' Fatima Sana Shaikh joked and told SCREEN, 'Bohot dard diye hai pyaar ne. (Love has given too much pain.)' Konkona Sensharma added, 'You have to be prepared for an element of risk. Life is uncertain, you have to embrace it. It's just like the box office.' Sara Ali Khan added, 'Sometimes, I struggle with going with flow, and like Konkona ma'am said, you have to just go in blind and hope for the best.' Sharing her take on love, Neena Gupta added, 'I have grown quite old, still I don't seem to know what love is. The only kind of love I know is between a parent and child.' Director Anurag Basu remembered late actor Irrfan Khan and singer KK during the event. He said, 'The whole film is, in fact, a tribute to both KK and Irrfan. We all miss them. I was just telling Bhushanji today that it was KK who beautifully complimented Pritam's compositions. KK has sung in all my movies, so obviously I miss him.' Metro In Dino also stars Pankaj Tripathi, Anupam Kher, and Ali Fazal in lead roles. The film is slated to release on July 4. Nawaz Kochra is an enthusiastic entertainment journalistic for the last 9 years, he has been a known face and successfully worked with some big publications. At Nawaz majorly covers TV and OTT and also does video interviews. Having the best conversations with celebrities is what Nawaz loves. ... Read More

Raajneeti turns 15: Prakash Jha says Katrina Kaif learnt her speech for 40 days, Anjum Rajabali had his doubts about Ranbir Kapoor
Raajneeti turns 15: Prakash Jha says Katrina Kaif learnt her speech for 40 days, Anjum Rajabali had his doubts about Ranbir Kapoor

Indian Express

time13 hours ago

  • Indian Express

Raajneeti turns 15: Prakash Jha says Katrina Kaif learnt her speech for 40 days, Anjum Rajabali had his doubts about Ranbir Kapoor

Aamir Khan may be planning to make a film series on the Mahabharata and then hang up his boots. But filmmaker Prakash Jha and screenwriter Anjum Rajabali did that 15 years ago. Their 2010 political drama Raajneeti was a modern adaptation of the epic, yet they maintain it never started off as that. 'Unlike Gangaajal (2003) or Apaharan (2004), Raajneeti didn't happen after witnessing a specific incident. It was a broader socio-political drama based on reality, but resonating with the Mahabharata. The characters are all the same everywhere, as they were back in the epic,' Prakash Jha tells SCREEN. 'There's something for everybody — drama, crisis, highs, lows — everything you can think of about human existence, it's all there capsuled in the Mahabharata. So every Indian creator keeps drawing from it,' he adds. 'We didn't start out by wanting to adapt the Mahabharata. We just allowed it to enter our script. It's a sprawling epic. But you're not writing an epic, you're writing a screenplay,' Rajabali points out. After serving as a script consultant on Jha's last two films, he was approached by the director to co-write a film on electoral politics. 'I wasn't interested in that,' recalls Rajabali. But he proposed to Jha that the filmmaker visits him every evening from 7:30 pm to 10 pm. They'd brainstorm over 'two shots of vodka' for seven days, in the middle of which Rajabali recalled they began veering towards the Mahabharata. The idea of power conflict and cousins competing with other brought them closer to the broad strokes of the epic. But Rajabali was dead sure he didn't want Karna to be the hero, much to the surprise of Jha. 'Karna has the usual characteristics of a hero: he's the underdog who comes up fighting against injustice. But I told Prakash you must not look at only as destiny, but also in terms of the choices he made. He wholeheartedly went with Duryodhana, knowing fully well he's an evil guy. That lends the story a dystopian end — who do we side with, because they're all evil,' reasons Rajabali. Enter: Arjuna. 'Prakash said Arjuna is a boring character, who's a good family member and a good warrior. But I brought his attention to Arjuna's arc — he doesn't want to enter the war, but Krishna gives him the perspective on why he should fight for a cause. Then their dark deeds begin to surface. So I asked Prakash, 'What if Arjuna begins to revel in that?' Because he's suddenly a demon who has been unleashed,' says Rajabali. The Arjuna of Raajneeti — Samar Pratap Singh — is the proverbial outsider. The youngest son who comes back from his school abroad for a few days, only to get caged in the politics of his family and that of the state. 'His father is killed, brother is jailed, so he has to enter politics out of anger. Then the guy who's researching Victorian poetry begins to do one dark deed after another. If you notice, even the topic of his research has to do with violence in the 18th century. So there's a fascination with violence, which was already coming out via academics,' underlines Rajabali. He recalls the time when he got a call from Jha who said they've found their Arjuna: Ranbir Kapoor. 'Who, Rishi Kapoor's son? That's how I knew of him,' says Rajabali, reminding us that Ranbir's debut film, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Saawariya (2007), hadn't released then. 'Have you seen it? Can he perform?' 'I haven't, but my instinct says he can.' 'I trusted his instincts, but I had my doubts,' reveals Rajabali. A few days after Jha began filming in Bhopal, Rajabali visited the set. Jha showed him the scene in which Ranbir is just sitting on a chair and looking at the television news of his father's death and brother's arrest. The camera goes from right to left on his face. 'That boy was speaking volumes with his silence. There was no prep. He's an intuitive actor, a complete natural. I was completely convinced. Ranbir had very few lines, but boy, did he leave an impact! He's the best actor we've had in more than a decade now,' says Rajabali. If Ranbir was a revelation, Katrina Kaif wasn't far behind. 'We couldn't pick Draupadi's angle as it is because the fight between husbands for her and all that jazz doesn't quite work today. But it stayed with me after reading the epic that Draupadi loved Arjuna, but he was too focused on ambition. So there was an unrequited love,' recalls Rajabali, who again was concerned if Kaif would be able to pull off the Hindi heartland dialogues with the right accent. 'Once again, Prakash was convinced she'd deliver,' he adds. 'Katrina is a very hardworking actor. She worked with so much dedication. She learnt her lines for 30-40 days so she could deliver them confidently,' Jha recalls. Rajabali did find issues with her accent during the filming, but changed his mind during the dubbing sessions. 'The amount of effort that the girl put in… she managed to deliver word to word in near-perfect diction,' says Rajabali. It's been 15 years, the party in power has changed, so it makes sense for us to pose the question to Rajabali: Was Katrina Kaif's character inspired by Sonia Gandhi? He refuses, but sees the parallels. 'There are various archetypal characters in life and in good literature and cinema. Rajiv Gandhi was the proverbial outsider. He didn't want to join politics. But then he did, and he won. Then he gets killed. There's a widow. Katrina looks half white. I wasn't concerned, but I anticipated such allegations,' says Rajabali. He then reveals that as the Congress party got concerned closer to the film's release, they inserted their representative in the Central Board of Film Certification. 'This was an open secret. There was no contention with the film though, except one word. When two people at a chai shop are discussing election results, a laconic man, buried in the newspaper, says, 'Le jaegi vidhwa sab samet kar.' They objected to 'vidhwa' because that might be confused with Sonia Gandhi. I didn't agree with it, but Prakash said we'd have to remove it. So the word was changed to 'bitiya,'' says Rajabali. Other changes in translating the Mahabharata to the world of Raajneeti included eliminating Nakul and Sahadeva because they're quite similar, and choosing Arjun Rampal's character Prithvi as Bhima over Yudhishthira. 'Prakash recommended we take Bhima because there's an innocence to him. He loves his family. He's loud and uncouth, but there's an endearing quality to him too. He's gullible so can get tricked very soon, so you need to protect him,' says Rajabali. Another change was to make their Krishna far more quieter than he's in the epic. In fact, Nana Patekar is the only actor in the ensemble who doesn't get a monologue. Even Naseeruddin Shah does, within a cameo. 'He doesn't pick up any weapons, but only operates on plotting. So that's how I asked Nana Patekar to be in his body language,' says Jha. 'He's a thinking person, a strategist. He'd just process everything and come up with just one line that Samar catches up on. He's the man to watch out for. He forces you to pay attention to him precisely because he doesn't speak much. So you always wonder what he's up to,' argues Rajabali. He quotes the example of the scene in which Patekar's character comes up with the perfect candidate to compete with Surya (Ajay Devgn's character based on Karna). 'It's obvious he's the natural choice to win in a Dalit constituency. Nana Patekar doesn't say anything, but he just goes there and announces their candidate as Surya's father. That's a masterstroke,' points out Rajabali. Jha recently admitted that he has the story for the sequel ready. 'I have an idea with me. But we just haven't gotten to it yet because other commitments keep coming up,' says the filmmaker, who's been busy with his MXPlayer show Aashram, his next film Janadhish, and other projects as a producer. 'It can be quite rich because it can reflect today's challenges for politicians. The Mahabharata is infinite so there is a lot of potential,' argues Rajabali. Jha points out that most characters from the first part, including those of Devgn, Manoj Bajpayee, and Arjun Rampal, are dead. So would the sequel continue where we left the other characters? Also Read — Dune director Denis Villenueve was impressed by Ranbir Kapoor after watching Raajneeti on a plane: 'He stood out among such an ensemble' 'It may start from there or once we work on it, it may be something completely new,' says Jha, with a shrug. But where would Samar, Indu, and Mama be today? Or what would their Arjuna, Draupadi, and Krishna up to to now? 'I can't possibly answer that because I may give you the idea Prakash and I just end up doing. So I have to be a little discrete about it,' says Rajabali, in true Krishna fashion.

Ranbir Kapoor Was A 'Natural', Katrina Kaif Learnt Her Lines In 40 Days For Rajneeti: Prakash Jha
Ranbir Kapoor Was A 'Natural', Katrina Kaif Learnt Her Lines In 40 Days For Rajneeti: Prakash Jha

News18

time14 hours ago

  • News18

Ranbir Kapoor Was A 'Natural', Katrina Kaif Learnt Her Lines In 40 Days For Rajneeti: Prakash Jha

Last Updated: Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif's standout roles in Raajneeti remain unforgettable. Prakash Jha and Anjum Rajabali recall their dedication and how they brought the film to life. Ranbir Kapoor and Katrina Kaif's performances in Raajneeti remain etched in fans' memory, with both actors proving their mettle in one of the most ambitious political dramas of the time. While Ranbir stunned with his silence and subtlety, Katrina surprised everyone with her intense preparation and commitment to the role. Raajneeti was released in 2010 and the team behind the film — director Prakash Jha and screenwriter Anjum Rajabali — recently revisited its journey, sharing how the story wasn't intended as a Mahabharata adaptation at first in a chat with SCREEN. 'Unlike Gangaajal (2003) or Apaharan (2004), Raajneeti didn't happen after witnessing a specific incident. It was a broader socio-political drama based on reality, but resonating with the Mahabharata. The characters are all the same everywhere, as they were back in the epic," Jha said. Rajabali recalled when Jha told him they'd found their Arjuna — and it was Ranbir Kapoor. 'Who, Rishi Kapoor's son? That's how I knew of him," Rajabali said, noting that Bhansali's Saawariya hadn't even released yet. 'Have you seen it? Can he perform?" 'I haven't, but my instinct says he can." 'I trusted his instincts, but I had my doubts," reveals Rajabali. But all doubts vanished once Rajabali visited the set in Bhopal. Jha showed him a scene where Ranbir sits silently, reacting to breaking news about his father's death and brother's arrest. 'That boy was speaking volumes with his silence. There was no prep. He's an intuitive actor, a complete natural. I was completely convinced. Ranbir had very few lines, but boy, did he leave an impact! He's the best actor we've had in more than a decade now," said Rajabali. If Ranbir left a lasting impression, Katrina Kaif's transformation impressed just as much. Rajabali shared how her character was loosely inspired by Draupadi, though the original elements from the epic were adapted to fit a modern setting. He initially had concerns about Katrina handling the Hindi-heavy script. 'Once again, Prakash was convinced she'd deliver," he noted. Jha stood by his casting choice and praised her work ethic. 'Katrina is a very hardworking actor. She worked with so much dedication. She learnt her lines for 30-40 days so she could deliver them confidently," he said. Rajabali added that while her accent worried him during filming, the dubbing sessions changed his mind. 'The amount of effort that the girl put in… she managed to deliver word to word in near-perfect diction," he said. Fifteen years later, Raajneeti continues to be a turning point in both Ranbir and Katrina's careers — a film that challenged their limits and brought out performances that still resonate. First Published: June 04, 2025, 09:44 IST

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store