Ratna Pathak Shah says there was ugliness in the star system of the 70s, actors were ‘obnoxious’ and ‘poor performers’

Ratna Pathak Shah spoke about the difficult conditions in the film industry back when she was starting out.

New Delhi | July 26, 2022 09:35 PM IST

3 min read

Naseeruddin Shah with wife Ratna Pathak Shah. (Photo: Express Archives)

Actor Ratna Pathak Shah recalled in an interview how toxic the star-culture was back in the 1970s, when she was coming up. Without mincing her words, she said that many stars at the time were ‘obnoxious’, and that decision-making wasn’t done on the strength of stories, but on the popularity of actors.

She said in the same interview with Pinkvilla that many movie deals were finalised in the living room of her and her husband, Naseeruddin Shah, but that people would look through her. It affected her self-confidence, but fortunately not her marriage.

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Speaking about the ‘ugliness of the star system’, the actor said, “The way in which the stars were treated versus everybody else. The way in which the content of films was completely driven by the star involved, and not by the idea of telling a story, unlike in the films of a certain number of directors like Bimal Roy, K Asif, Mehboob Khan. For them, the star was the carrier of the story. And they were big enough themselves so that the stars did behave.”

She continued, “But, by the time I was growing up in the 70s, the stars were… pretty obnoxious, sorry, in the way they behaved. And they were all poor performers, and they were all cruising on I don’t know what. So, it was hard to feel any kind of connection to that kind of attitude.”

She said that by the time she started, Naseer had already been at it for some years. So, she had a fair idea of what an actor needed to do to get work. In fact, she said, she found out very quickly how difficult it is to get work. “People would come and talk to Naseer, but they just didn’t see me. So many films would be decided in our sitting room, but they just didn’t register that I was an actor, and I wanted to be a part of this world also.”

She said that it was probably her fault that she couldn’t communicate well enough. She also credited her husband for teaching her the subtleties of acting, and said that he should leave behind a manual of some kind for the benefit of future generations of actors.

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