Actor Nargis Fakhri made her Bollywood debut with filmmaker Imtiaz Ali’s romantic drama Rockstar (2011) opposite actor Ranbir Kapoor. After appearing in a few Hindi films, she decided to take a much-needed two-year hiatus and thus, went back to be with her family in the USA.
It is said that that the glitz and glamour of show business has a flip side and can take a toll on one’s mental health. In an exclusive conversation with News18, a candid Fakhri reveals that working tirelessly around the clock and dealing with the rat race for years not only came down on her emotionally but physically too.
She tells us, “I became unwell. I was going through too much mental and physical stress. I had a lot of physical ailments that were interfering with my daily life. It was very difficult to ignore these problems. My body, in a way, was telling me that it’s not being able to handle it. I knew it in my mind that I had to take a break because I wasn’t the happiest person.”
Fakhri further reveals that the tumultuous nature of the film industry proved to be a challenge for her. While she tried coping with the ebbs and flows, she had a tough time navigating through the work pressure.
“In an industry like this, you’re constantly running on a hamster wheel, you’re always in a rat race, and you’ve to keep up because you don’t want to fall back. You’ve to attend meetings, you’ve to do ads… it just never ends! You only get a couple of days off between projects. The pressure and the mental stress that you go through is heavy even though that depends on the kind of films or characters you’re doing. You’ve to invest your soul when you’re acting. Actors need more than a few days of break to get in touch with themselves again,” she explains.
Fakhri shares that despite these hiccups, she kept at it by focusing on the silver lining. “I kept working because I was blessed to have the opportunities and I didn’t want to just throw them away and walk off. I definitely enjoyed some bits of it but I had my share of unhappy days, weeks and months,” she recalls and adds, “I had to push through. I didn’t want to just give up. I was pushing myself so hard that my mind felt disconnected from my body. I really needed rest.”
The 42-year-old believes that being away from her support system affected her during her initial years of the career when she was trying to find her feet in the film industry. She elaborates, “If your family is close to you or they live close by, there’s nothing like it. Coming home to family, who you share a good relationship with, is very important because they ground and recharge you. If you don’t have that, you’re just left flapping in the wind with nothing to hold onto. I’m a very strong person and I could’ve continued but it was a necessary decision to leave. I had to talk to myself and say, ‘Hey, what’s the point of being here? Why are you listening to other people? Listen to your body, listen to your feelings.’”
Going out of sight and hence, out of mind is a phenomenon that many actors have faced in the past. But Fakhri wasn’t scared about it when she decided to press the pause button. She says, “I remember telling my agency about it. They told me not to do that and cautioned me that if I go out of sight, I would be out of people’s mind. I can’t deny their fears, there’s definitely some truth to that. But what was important was the answer to the question, ‘Why would someone choose to go out of sight and how much do they want to be there out there anymore?’”
The Main Tera Hero (2014) actor avers that prioritising her health took precedence over the fear of being away from the limelight and she recollects how she often met fans whose love consistently assured her that she was in for the long haul.
“The idea is to know why you’re making a certain choice and decide what’s important. The statement ‘out of sight, out of mind’ can be true to some extent but people like me who are a part of the film industry can make a mark and live forever. I believe you can never be completely forgotten. Even when I wasn’t working and took some time off, people who would meet me would tell me, ‘We can’t wait to see you onscreen.’ They were eagerly waiting and so, I think you’re never completely forgotten, and I don’t feel forgotten,” she states.
An important turning point in Fakhri’s life was a Vipasana retreat that she turned to during her time away from Bollywood. She also feels that spending time with herself and her loved ones helped her reconnect to her roots. She says, “I’m very introspective and I often ask myself questions. I knew it was my decision and choice to be an actor but if I wasn’t not happy, I needed to change that. The break was great as it helped me. I figured out my problems, I got healthier and I had the time to relax mentally. When I was ready to come back to India in March 2020 after I realised that I miss acting, the country was under a lockdown. At that time, I had gone for a vipasana retreat, where you can’t speak or even look at people. It’s something that everyone has to try at least once in their life.”
While she was all set to come back to India two years back, the Covid-19 pandemic further delayed her plans. An optimist, she believes it did her good. “Since we were at the retreat, we didn’t know about anything that was happening in the world outside. We had no access to information and everyone was just meditating eight hours a day. When it was finally over, my friends told me that we were hit by a pandemic, the food at grocery stores were over and everyone was inside their homes. But the meditation and the retreat helped me not get disturbed,” says the actor, who was last seen in the film Torbaaz (2020).
