Ameesha reveals flip side on having a blockbuster like ‘Gadar’ in filmography

With a runtime of two hour fifty minute film, 'Gadar: Ek Prem Katha' is the second most-watched Hindi film in India since the 1990s.

New Delhi: Actress Ameesha Patel made her Bollywood debut with the blockbuster ‘Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai in 2000 and a year later she was seen in the mega blockbuster ‘Gadar: Ek Prem Katha’ in 2001, which she agrees was a game changer for her career but added that it had a flipside too.

“I would definitely agree that Gadar 1 was a game changer for my career. How can it not be? How can one of India’s most iconic films not change a person’s career graph,” Ameesha told IANS.

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With a runtime of two hour fifty minute film, ‘Gadar: Ek Prem Katha’ is the second most-watched Hindi film in India since the 1990s. It went on to emerge as the highest-grossing Hindi film since 1994 film ‘Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!’

“Having said that, after coming from ‘Kaho Na Pyaar Hai’ the first film and then Gadar summing it up to be even a bigger hit or a colossal giant or Aamir Khan sweetly calls it a monster o a success. It gave me two things. It was a game changer because suddenly it catapulted me as this performer. This college kid can play a mother which everyone doubted.”

The 47-year-old actress shared that not just back then but even today when the sequel is set to release, people question her on playing a mother on screen.

“They said ‘you are too young too play a mother’ and they doubt it even today for Gadar 2. They said it back then and they are saying it today as well. The script is so powerful that I would play a mother again and again.”

But all good things come with a price.

Ameesha said that the benchmark that ‘Gadar: Ek Prem Katha’ set was too high that the success of her other films paled in front of it.

“The flip side of that is that with the adulation, love and respect and the career rising the benchmark Gadar set was so high that even after I delivered successes in my other films like ‘Humraaz’, ‘Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd’, ‘Race 2’ or ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa’ or pleasant films such ‘Yeh Hai Jalwa’ and successes of Telugu films Mahesh Babu, Pawan Kalyan, Jr NTR

“Somehow the benchmark that Gadar set was so high that people’s expectations I think from all of us not only me, but Sunny, Anil Sharma ji were at such a high level that all our other work failed in comparison to that or rather paled in comparison,” the actress said.

“So people thought that was it. That was the flipside to seeing such a colossal monster of a success.”

‘Gadar 2’ is set in 1971, and Tara Singh returns to Lahore, Pakistan in the midst of an anti-India “Crush India” campaign, to bring back his son Charanjeet.

The film will be released on August 11.