Mumbai: Madhuri Dixit, one of the most successful and bankable heroines of her time, recalled being body-shamed early in her career.
The actress revealed that when her films weren’t doing well, she was constantly advised and pressurised to go for a nose job until she delivered her first hit.
In a conversation with Nayandeep Rakshit for his YouTube channel, Madhuri said: “A lot of people told me when I had just started — do this, how is your nose, your this, your that. I used to go and say, ‘Mom, they’re saying this.’ And my mom would say, ‘Don’t worry about it. Once you have a successful movie, that’s the very thing they’ll love about you’.”
Madhuri admitted that she initially found her mother’s conviction hard to believe, but things changed after ‘Tezaab’ turned out to be a hit and she became an overnight sensation.
All the unsolicited advice eventually stopped. “After Tezaab, nobody said anything about being skinny or being this or that. People just accepted me for who I am. Even today, I tell the new girls — Don’t try to be in a mould. Don’t say this is how a heroine should look. If you’re different, that’s a uniqueness you have. Play on that.”
On the work front, Madhuri was recently seen in Nagesh Kukunoor’s web series ‘Mrs Deshpande’. She plays a serial killer in the series, which is currently streaming on JioHotstar.
