New Delhi:
There's a revolution of sorts underway in Bollywood, led by the crop of leading ladies who seem to want to recast the rules of Tinseltown to their liking.
We had an inkling something was up when Karan Johar asked Band Baaja Baraat actress Anushka Sharma on Koffee With Karan if she thought she could act the pants off the other girls. With a toss of her head, and absolutely no trace of embarrassment, she replied that she could.
This is precisely the sort of confidence and lack of any false modesty that Anushka shares with other actresses inching towards stardom today. For Parineeti Chopra, who says she's "hungry for edgy films," the ease stems perhaps from the backing of a big studio. For Sonakshi Sinha, the current box office darling, the confidence might spring from the fact that, as the daughter of Shatrughan Sinha, good will hunting is far from required.
Whatever be the reason, it allows Parineeti to declare that she'd expected her first hero to be someone more exalted than newbie Arjun Kapoor. "When I entered Yash Raj films I thought my first film would be with Shah Rukh second with Aamir and all," she says. And it allows Sonakshi Sinha to appear opposite actors almost twice her age, such as Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar.
And then there are starlets like Shraddha Kapoor, daughter of Shakti, who will star in Aashiqui 2 despite having nary a hit to her credit; and Mahesh Bhatt's daughter Alia who's debuting in Karan Johar's Student Of The Year and just might be Ranbir Kapoor's leading lady in the next Abhinav Kashyap film.
It seems, therefore, that Bollywood's new heroines are unaffected by the numbers game. Will their careers be defined by their box office records? Thus far, it seems not. But it's early days yet.
Watch: Bollywood's change of guard
We had an inkling something was up when Karan Johar asked Band Baaja Baraat actress Anushka Sharma on Koffee With Karan if she thought she could act the pants off the other girls. With a toss of her head, and absolutely no trace of embarrassment, she replied that she could.
This is precisely the sort of confidence and lack of any false modesty that Anushka shares with other actresses inching towards stardom today. For Parineeti Chopra, who says she's "hungry for edgy films," the ease stems perhaps from the backing of a big studio. For Sonakshi Sinha, the current box office darling, the confidence might spring from the fact that, as the daughter of Shatrughan Sinha, good will hunting is far from required.
Whatever be the reason, it allows Parineeti to declare that she'd expected her first hero to be someone more exalted than newbie Arjun Kapoor. "When I entered Yash Raj films I thought my first film would be with Shah Rukh second with Aamir and all," she says. And it allows Sonakshi Sinha to appear opposite actors almost twice her age, such as Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar.
And then there are starlets like Shraddha Kapoor, daughter of Shakti, who will star in Aashiqui 2 despite having nary a hit to her credit; and Mahesh Bhatt's daughter Alia who's debuting in Karan Johar's Student Of The Year and just might be Ranbir Kapoor's leading lady in the next Abhinav Kashyap film.
It seems, therefore, that Bollywood's new heroines are unaffected by the numbers game. Will their careers be defined by their box office records? Thus far, it seems not. But it's early days yet.
Watch: Bollywood's change of guard
