Neena Gupta is undoubtedly one of the most versatile actors of our time. The actor witnessed a dry spell a few years ago with minimal to no work and had to appeal to filmmakers to offer her roles. However, it doesn’t take much time for things to change.
Today, not only does Neena get a variety of roles but also a hefty fee for her acting. Not just that, she even revealed that a recent signing amount she received for a project was so high that she was shocked. She felt that the amount was too much.
Neena, whose most recent project was the Amazon Prime Video web series Panchayat, said that Badhaai Ho resurrected her career in 2018. She added that while she had previously only been offered roles of women in urban settings, her options had expanded after she starred in Badhaai Ho wherein she played a lady who became pregnant at the age of 52.
“I’ve been offered a great amount of money,” Neena told Bollywood Hungama when asked if she got paid well for her work now that she had been through financial difficulties for years. “My manager just revealed to me the amount I had just received for a recent project and it left me shocked. I told him ‘Nahin yaar, ye to bahut jyada hain, itne kyu maange (No. This is too much. Why did you ask for so much money)?”
“An actor always wants to explore new roles; nobody loves playing identical characters all the time,” Neena stated when asked how she felt playing diverse roles after being stereotyped as a “city girl” for so long. However, we must choose from the options presented to us, she said.
“I’m currently in a position where I’m being offered a variety of tasks. Because I wear shorts and skirts, the media saw me as a city girl, and I was cast in those types of roles. But Badhaai Ho altered everything for me; people immediately realised I could also play middle-class housewives.”
Neena is currently shooting for Vikas Bahl’s Goodbye, which stars Amitabh Bachchan and Rashmika Mandanna.
