Mumbai: After a seven-year hiatus, actress Urmila Matondkar is set to return to the silver screen.
Urmila, known for her electrifying dance moves in the song ‘Rangeela Re’, revealed in an interview with HT that she will be making her comeback with an OTT film soon.
“It’s just about time to get back onto the sets and get rocking again,” the actress said.
Urmila further shared that she had never quit Bollywood, but was waiting for the right kind of roles.
“When it comes to my work, I have always been selective. I can’t blame anybody if they thought that maybe I’m not doing movies or something. But that never was the case. I’m definitely at this moment all ready to get back onto the silver screen,” she clarified.
“I am looking for roles which I have not done before, especially on OTT. Because there is just so much that is happening on OTT, which has opened a different gamut of genres, characters and emotions, which were unexplored earlier,” Urmila continued.
“I have already finished one show, and hopefully that should come sometime next year. I want something that is challenging enough as an actor to actually get me up and go out there. I will definitely try and explore something new. It’s just about time to get back onto the film sets and get rocking again.”
Reflecting on her journey in the industry, she said, “The greatest thing I managed to do over my career is that I never got stuck in any mould. I broke each and every mould which I created to the best of my abilities… There were other contemporaries of mine who were doing similar kinds of roles, wearing similar kinds of clothes. I quickly moved on.”
“After Rangeela, I moved towards Judaai… I tried to use my name and my star status to be part of movies which were not necessarily big movies but were good…They gave me opportunities to create different versions of myself on celluloid. That has been the biggest asset of my career. When others got fed up with doing the same roles after 10 years, I had already explored so many different kinds of varieties, which, sadly, critics then refused to see, but that’s fine. My audiences saw it, they loved it, and that is the only thing that mattered above everything else,” she added.
“I have no problems with the kind of money I was paid. I was definitely one of the highly paid stars back then, also. There were also movies in which I was paid more than my male counterparts. I will humbly accept the fact. So, I don’t think the topic of pay disparity should be looked at from one perspective,” Urmila noted.
“Things have changed for the better. Over the years, the payrolls have been much better, but then so have movie budgets. So, it would be a little immature to give an answer from only one perspective. Everything has changed tremendously over the last 3 decades, and therefore, the payrolls and everything else also have changed accordingly.”
Urmila was last seen in ‘Blackmail’ in 2018.
She tied the knot with Kashmiri businessman and model Mohsin Akhtar Mir on March 3, 2016, in a private ceremony. However, after 8 years of marriage, the couple filed for mutual divorce in 2024.
