Aditi Rao Hydari on shifting focus to South cinema

The actor says lack of good roles in Hindi film industry never bothered her

Actor Aditi Rao Hydari says her shift to the South film industry was organic as the work being offered there was way more exciting from what was pitched to her in Bollywood. Hydari made her Hindi debut with filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s Delhi 6 in 2009 and rose to prominence in 2011 with director Sudhir Mishra’s movie Yeh Saali Zindagi.

The actor went on to feature in Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar, romantic-comedy London Paris New York, action-thriller Wazir and Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s period- drama Padmaavat. She made her Tamil debut in 2007 with Sringaram but got a breakthrough a decade later with filmmaker Mani Ratnam’s romantic-drama Kaatru Veliyidai.

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“The stuff that was coming to me in Hindi, I wasn’t so excited about. But films coming my way in Tamil, Telugu or Malayalam were really exciting. People were writing scripts for me, waiting for me to finish something and join them. “It wasn’t that I was weighing my options. I was grabbing the best of what I was being offered, with some of the best people,” Hydari said.

Kaatru Veliyidai set the ball rolling for the actor as she followed it up with Telugu drama Sammohanam, Ratnam’s Chekka Chivantha Vaanam and last year’s Malayalam romance Sufiyum Sujatayum. Hydari, whose last Hindi film was Mishra’s 2018 drama Daas Dev, said lack of good roles in Hindi film industry never bothered her as the interesting work kept coming from south.

“I wasn’t disappointed because I don’t think I had the time to be. I was just really excited with the kind of work I was getting. Today I don’t think ‘oh I haven’t done a Hindi film in two years so now I should sign one.’ It really is all about how eager I am to do a film or work with a director.” The actor recently returned to the Hindi space with Netflix thriller, The Girl on The Train.

The actor will be next seen in filmmaker Vikramaditya Motwane’s upcoming web series Stardust. The show also features Bengali cinema star Prosenjit Chatterjee.