'Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani' actor Anjali Anand: 'Audiences will not be happy with a heroine if she looks like me'

Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani actress Anjali Anand, who played Ranveer Singh’s sister Golu in the Karan Johar directorial, spoke to Hindustan Times recently about the beauty standards in the Hindi film industry and how she won’t be accepted as a leading lady by the industry and even the audiences.

She said, “It’s not just the showbiz industry, even the audiences will not be very happy with a heroine if she looks like me. It is a very hypocritical world that we live in. Everybody wants to see a toned body and fair skin on screen.”

Anand added, “Many audiences call themselves progressive… Okay, then! Tomorrow, make a film with me as a lead and if that becomes a very big hit, then I’d agree that maybe the world is changing, but until then, I don’t think it is the industry’s problem, it is everybody’s problem. We need to move ahead in life and not think about petty things like how a person looks.”

Talking about her future projects, she said, “Whatever comes next for me, I want to be very careful in what I’m choosing so that I’m not stereotyped. I hope I get to play something more challenging and unbelievably different, and not what filmmakers and audiences already expect from me. I want to play different parts, whatever it takes.”

Filmmaker Karan Johar, who returned to director’s chair after 7-long years, said that the success of RRKPK was very important for him.

The truth is that I’m a bit overwhelmed. It’s not that I was not hoping for this. But I think the environment in our industry was kind of turbulent at the time and I haven’t released a film that I’ve directed in 7 years. Plus, the last three years were not easy on me or the industry. There was a lot of negativity. And all that anxiety kind of built a ball of anxiety inside me which I hadn’t addressed,” said KJo in a chat with the film fanatics hosted by Shubhra Gupta.