Kajol defends her stand that actors work harder than 9-5 employees: ‘You are sitting at a desk, don’t have to be 100% present’

Kajol believes that actors work harder than those who do 9-5 jobs because the latter can "chill out, loosen up, walk, talk, and do their jobs at the same time" but the former have to be "100% present" all the time.

By: Entertainment Desk

Mumbai | October 14, 2025 03:31 PM IST

4 min read

Kajol says actors work harder than those who do 9-5 jobs.

On the second episode of her celebrity chat show Two Much on Prime Video India, co-host Kajol opined that actors work harder than those who do regular 9-5 jobs. While everyone else on that episode — including co-host Twinkle Khanna and guests Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt — disagreed, Kajol stuck to her stand.

“It’s a very on-the-ball kind of a job. If you’re there, you have to be there 100%. Yes, maybe there are actors who are 100% all the time. But for me, especially when I’m shooting a film continuously, (it’s very important),” said Kajol, referring to her most recent shoot on the sets of season 2 JioHotstar legal drama The Trial, for which she shot for 35-40 days at a stretch.

“It was 35-40 days of waking up early. You’ve to fit your workout in. Your food has to be on order, bang on! You know you can’t put on even one inch somewhere because your clothes won’t fit you anymore. That’s a huge pressure, by the way. It’s really big. And the entire programme goes on and on,” added Kajol in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter India.

She argued that an actor, when not acting in films or shows, is also attending events. “To be 100% present for 12-14 hours a day is really difficult. When you’re doing a 9-5 job and you’re sitting at a desk, you don’t have to be 100% present. You can take your tea breaks. I’m not saying we don’t take tea or coffee breaks. But you can chill out, let loose, walk, talk, and do your job at the same time. But we can’t,” she said.

Kajol claimed there’s also the pressure of scrutiny. “You’re always boiling over 24/7. You’re always paranoid, looking around. We live like that,” she added. She said that’s the reason why she hasn’t acted in as many movies as her contemporaries. She still believes in taking breaks to recuperate before she goes back to work every time.

Another dissimilarity between Kajol and her contemporaries, she said, was that she was “dark” and “fat” back when she entered the film industry at the age of 16 in the early 1990s. “Society isn’t very kind to the people who are dark or not their prescribed size. I got into the film industry which is filled with fair, thin people,” said the actor.

“I had a lot of kind people around me. Everybody loved me. But ya, that thing stuck inside my head, that I was attractive, intelligence, and cool, but maybe not strictly beautiful. The realization that I was took me a while,” said Kajol, adding, “It’s these ideas that we have in our head about who we are. What the world sees us as is very different. What the world showed me was that I was beautiful. But I didn’t believe it. Till I began to believe it, I don’t think I heard the compliments either. Because I wasn’t listening.”

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Kajol recalled she began feeling she’s beautiful after she became mother to daughter Nysa Devgan. “I suddenly looked into the mirror one day and said, ‘Wow! Man! You’re looking good today! What happened?’ She turned things today for me. She’d say, ‘Mom, you’re looking good today! You’re turning 30! Wow, pat on the back!’ It started there and went on and on,” added Kajol.

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