Vidya Balan Speaks Up About Rise In Women-Centric Roles

Bollywood actor Vidya Balan recently spoke up about female-centric films and how Madhuri Dixit inspired her to become an actor.

The actor has essayed some of the most powerful female characters in cinema and spoke to the audience at the 21st Pune International Film Festival (PIFF). Balan said that there were a lot of exciting and well-written roles for female actors nowadays.

Vidya Balan was speaking to Jabbar Patel, the Director of PIFF at an event titled "The Challenges of Female Actors in Entertainment World" on February 8.

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Vidya Balan On Women-Centric Roles

The 44-year-old actor spoke about how women's roles in films were well-written as "women are taking the center stage in their lives, and this reflects on screen."

She added that while there are great roles, most of them are variations of old roles.

Vidya Balan also spoke about the perception that women-led films are a "safer bet on OTT platforms" rather than on the big screen and described it as the biggest hurdle the film industry faces.

Balan added, "Nowadays, female actors are doing great and female-centric films can do well as people are hungry for different content."

The actor also mentioned that the rise in women-led films gave way to women writers and directors. Balan said, "Though there are individualistic differences between all directors, women directors come from a place of experience... Male directors still see women in the context of a mother, sister or someone, whereas women directors other women as individuals".

Balan added that she did not mind the label "female-centric" but believed that the term would be dropped as women-led films become the norm.

Balan also mentioned that she decided to pursue a career in acting after she watched Madhuri Dixit's famous song Ek Do Teen from the film Tezaab. She spoke about the rejections she faced at the beginning of her career and said she was "thrown out" of the 12 films she was signed for.

Balan concluded by saying that people should "observe people and their surroundings and learn from it to grow in their careers."