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Quick-change artistes Bollywood actresses are shedding their glam-doll look in the hope of getting awards. Bipasha Basu hasn’t only shed oodles of weight, she’s also ready to do away with her oomphy image. In Prakash Jha’s Apharan, Bipasha stars as a salwar kameez clad-girl next door. "There are so many
girls doing Jism now. It was time for me to do something for a
change," she jokes. "Raveena Tandon wore crumpled cotton saris in my Daman. She still looked ravishing. Likewise, Sush. She remains gloriously alluring even in a Rs 200 sari and the Awadhi dialect that I’ve made her speak in the film," she added. So, are the glam dolls
looking for a serious makeover? Priyanka Chopra, who smouldered
sensuously as the hotshot business executive in Abbas-Mustan’s Aitraaz,
would soon be getting into a traditional nine-yard Bengali sari in a
new adaptation of Bimal Mitra’s Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam that
Rituparno Ghosh will probably direct. Rekha and Hema Malini got seriously makeup-less in Jabbar Patel’s Musafir and Gulzar’s Khushboo, respectively. Sharmila Tagore shed all her mannerisms to play a frumpy housewife in Basu Bhattacharya’s Aavishkar. Mumtaz, the ultimate glam-doll, had no qualms about going totally de-glam in Vijay Anand’s Tere Mere Sapne. Even Zeenat Aman tucked her cleavage into a wide-angled ghagra choli to play a sweeper in O.P. Ralhan’s Pyaas, albeit not as successfully as the other actresses who got out of their baby-doll images for a spot of heavy-duty histrionic hijinks. Why, even the empress of oomph, Helen, suddenly got out of her furs, sequins and body stockings in the 1970s to play a long-suffering second wife to Vinod Khanna in Mahesh Bhatt’s Lahu Ke Do Rang. Significantly, the sensuous voice of Asha Bhosle was replaced by the more conventionally mainstream melodist Lata Mangeshkar’s soul-piercing tune, Zid na karo, for Helen. The performance won Helen her first and only Filmfare award. And then came the other queen of oomph, Bindu, whom Hrishikesh Mukherjee decided to de-glam in Abhimaan and Arjun Pundit. Both got Bindu awards galore. Most actresses see the challenge of de-glamorised acting as a passport to national and popular awards. And rightly so. Didn’t Kareena Kapoor get nominated for numerous awards in Govind Nihalani’s Dev, where her make-up man was sent away on holiday? "All I did was rinse my face with water and I was ready to face the camera," laughed Kareena. Shilpa Shetty, who made a career out of playing the glam-doll, suddenly shook awake. She stopped being a fake in Phir Milenge. But it was tough. She has confessed she felt vulnerable and unarmed playing the HIV-positive woman. But having tasted blood, she’s happy to shed her de-glamorised image for those awards. But can performances be
pitched at winning awards? And is de-glamorisation a sure way of
getting there? The fact that Rani Mukherjee’s frumpy Bihari
housewife’s role in Mani Rathnam’s Yuva walked away with
all the awards over Kareena Kapoor’s sophisticated city slicker’s
turn in is proof of which way the cookie crumbles. IANS |
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