Kangana Ranaut on her journey in Bollywood: Call me a rebel but I will get what is mine

"My journey has been quite different. While flying to Mumbai for the conference, I was thinking about all sorts of questions that would be asked to me here. So, I thought that has my journey really been unusual or is it only me who thinks that way? But I have to fight for everything in life, even the smallest of the things," said Kangana Ranaut at Simran trailer launch.

Written by Priyanka Sharma

Mumbai | Updated: August 9, 2017 10:56 AM IST

4 min read

Kangana Ranaut, Simran, Kangana Ranaut controversies, Kangana Ranaut karan johar, Kangana Ranaut journey in Bollywood, Kangana Ranaut Simran

A lot of you might think, 'to be or not to be' but it's okay or like you guys use the word rebel, ladaku. I don't take offense to that. It is good how it is. but it is okay. But I will take what is mine, be it by fighting or any other means," Kangana Ranaut said as the audience cheered.

“A lot of you might think, ‘to be or not to be’ but it’s okay or like you guys use the word rebel, ladaku. I don’t take offense to that. It is good how it is. but it is okay. But I will take what is mine, be it by fighting or any other means,” Kangana Ranaut said as the audience cheered.

“She should stop playing the victim card,” filmmaker Karan Johar had said just days after Kangana Ranaut revealed how he ignored her initially for being an outsider. On Tuesday evening, as Kangana talked about her 11-year-old journey in the film industry with mediapersons, the actor, as if slyly teasing Johar for his ‘victim card’ comment, reiterated that things indeed don’t come easy to her, and she has “to fight for every single thing in her life and she will achieve what is rightfully hers in the industry.”

While one would expect people to become defensive after being slammed for playing the victim, Kangana Ranaut apparently believes in using the criticism to her advantage and normalise it, something which is becoming a pattern of sorts in the way the actor conducts herself professionally. The applause that she drew from the mediapersons for talking about her struggles was a small proof that she came across as an honest person rather than someone practising self-victimisation.

“My journey has been quite different. While flying to Mumbai for the conference, I was thinking about all sorts of questions that would be asked to me here. So, I thought that has my journey really been unusual or is it only me who thinks that way? But the one aspect that is striking about it is that I have to fight for everything in life, even the smallest of the things. I get things only after I fight for them. Now, I don’t know why it happens. Maybe it is my destiny but I have made peace with it. It has become the norm of my life so I don’t have a problem with that. A lot of you might think, ‘to be or not to be’ but it’s okay or like you guys use the word rebel, ladaku. I don’t take offense to that. It is good how it is. but it is okay. But I will take what is mine, be it by fighting or any other means,” Kangana said as the audience cheered.

This is, of course, not the first time that Kangana took on flak with admirable vigour. The glimpse of this behaviour was first seen during the messy Hrithik Roshan episode in 2015. When her former boyfriend Adhyayan Suman said that she used to practise black magic, Kangana, rather than defending herself went on the record saying, “Witchcraft is an ancient art, what’s the harm in knowing about it? Don’t we love Harry Potter?”

The shaming that she was being subjected to post Adhyayan’s admission suddenly changed into praise for the actor for being “unswerving and honest.” Earlier this year, when writer-editor Apurva Asrani alleged that Kangana tried to take his credit for writing Simran, the actor turned the tables in an interview. Kangana said she should be credited for writing the dialogues of the film “as Apurva’s drafts did not match up to her expectations.”

Even on Tuesday evening, after she unveiled the trailer of Simran, Kangana, at length, spoke about how actors’ involvement in dialogue improvisations become essential if the film is character-driven. “There are two kinds of films, story-driven and character-driven. Movies, which are character-driven, require actors to improvise dialogues so that the character looks relatable and there is a flow. Simran is focused on one character so I had told Hansal sir that I would do my own dialogues.”

Watch Kangana Ranaut’s Simran trailer here: