Mimi Chakraborty Talks About Modelling For Pocket Money To Becoming An MP

“I was born in a small town, Jalpaiguri. Life was simple. As a kid, I loved watching TV. I’d often say, I want to be inside that box & do what they are doing," says Mimi Chakraborty.

Actor Mimi Chakraborty is a sitting Member of Parliament. Chakraborty is known for her work in Bengali cinema and television too. She was listed as the most desirable woman in the Calcutta Times list of Most Desirable Women 2016. In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, Mimi contested from Jadavpur Lok Sabha Constituency as a Trinamool Congress candidate and defeated veteran CPIM leader and former Kolkata mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharya and Bharatiya Janata Party’s Anupam Hazra.

Chakraborty and Nusrat Jahan, another Bengali actress turned MP from TMC, were trolled online for their pictures in front of the Parliament. Many people alleged that the newly elected MPs were dressed inappropriately. However, Mimi gave it back to the critics saying that even men politicians come to the Parliament wearing jeans and t-shirts. SheThePeople spoke to the actor-politician. Here is what she has to say:

People would tell my mom that I was crazy. But I was determined. In 2007, I decided to move to Kolkata to follow my passion; My parents were scared but they believed in my dream.

Mimi Chakraborty On Modelling

I was 18 when I started modelling but I didn’t have much luck because of my height. So I started auditioning for serials. I was in a lecture when I got my first audition call; I rushed out of the class the minute I got the chance and took an auto to the venue. There was a queue already waiting to audition. I did my part with confidence and landed a role in a Bengali serial in 2008.

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At work, I had to hear things like I don’t look very Bengali, I can’t act, I’m tomboyish, I have an accent and I should go back to the village I had come from. No one wanted to do my hair or makeup. You don’t look good in anything, you have straight hair and a broken nose’ they’d say. It continued but I swallowed my tears & kept working hard.

Two years later I auditioned for the lead role in a huge serial. While I was sitting in the makeup room waiting for my turn, Director Rituparno Ghosh came up to me, took a wet cloth, removed all my makeup, put some kohl & said, "She is selected, ask the rest to leave." On getting to know that I hadn’t eaten since morning he offered me food; it was a meal that I will never forget in my life.

The show was a superhit but after it was over I was sitting idle for a year. I was typecasted. My bank account was zero, I remember going to meetings with no money to come back home. My mom was upset with me but I was headstrong.

In 2012 I was cast in a lead role opposite prominent names in two big films. My second film was a blockbuster and from then, there was no looking back. In 2019 I contested the Lok Sabha elections because I wanted to do more for the people who have given me so much love and won it.

From modelling for pocket money to becoming an MP in West Bengal, I have come a long way, but I still wonder how things would have been having I not believed in myself and did things my way.