People didn’t believe me for the longest time, till I ventured out in Hindi, and I started doing the kind of roles I am doing here. Now actresses from the South call me to tell me that they are so happy that I have ventured out of South to do these kinds of films. They tell me that they try to find such films but they end up doing the usual roles because they are the only ones available. Random people call and tell me, “stay there, don’t come back, you won’t get such good work here.’ This is what I mean when I say I took a different route. I wanted to prove my mettle and do impactful roles. Having seen me now, may be there will be some film for me in the South, which is risky enough to have the female as lead. Now, I don’t have anything to lose in South, so I will do cinema I want to do.

If you had to change a few things about how the Indian film industry functions towards women actors, what would they be?

First, please write a good character sketch for a female lead just like you would for a male lead. I recently received a script from the South where the men’s character was so interesting! They had a very good screen presence for the female but there was no depth to her character, she could’ve been anyone. This is something we have to address. I would also like a change in the pay disparity. An actress puts in equal amount of work as an actor in a film and she faces equal amount of backlash if the film doesn’t work. So why such step motherly attitude towards a heroine? At times, the heroines get paid even lesser than the character artists in the film. If they are so less significant then why have them at all? A hero has the liberty to do one film a year because he gets paid that much. As heroines we have to do 2-3 films a year to get a house running!