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Ideally, it should have been easier for Radhika Apte to find work in Hindi films after the success of Shor in the City (2011), but the actor hasn’t had a single release since. Instead, her meetings with producers and filmmakers were spent battling Bollywood’s unhealthy obsession with typecasting. Most of the offers were only a shade different from her character in Shor — a coy, sari-clad housewife — and the makers wouldn’t even consider her for roles that needed her to dress differently. “Actors in the West look different in every role they play,” she says.
But Apte, who started her career on stage, didn’t relent, and now, her jinx will be broken on February 20 with the release of Sriram Raghavan-directed crime drama Badlapur, where Apte essays the role of an urban, independent working woman. The film, however, is only one of her many films lined up for 2015. Later this year, the 29-year-old actor will be seen playing the girl-next-door in the upcoming sex comedy Hunterrr, followed by Ketan Mehta’s Manjhi: The Mountain Man opposite Nawazuddin Siddiqui, where she transitions from a teen to a woman in her 30s. In her kitty are Mila Madhab Panda’s Kaun Kitne Paani Mein in which she is an Oriya social worker, and in Parched, an Indo-US collaboration, she plays a Kutchi village girl.
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A well-known artiste in the Pune and Mumbai theatre circles, the actor, who began her stage career as a child, has been lauded for her performances in plays such as Purnaviram and Matra Ratra. The plays have been produced by Aasakta, a Pune-based theatre group she has been associated with since 2002. Mohit Takalkar, the founder of the experimental theatre group, recounts how when he was reviving the play Tu seven years after its premiere in 2006, Apte was the only actor who readily agreed to incorporate changes in her character. Over the last decade, Takalkar has seen Apte grow as a performer and says her spontaneity is her greatest strength as an actor. “Although, infusing a little more method in her skill will make her even better,” he says.
Shor maybe her first mainstream Hindi film success — after Rakta Charitra (2010) and I Am (2011) — but Apte’s big screen debut came in 2009, in the Bengali film Antaheen, opposite Rahul Bose. A critically acclaimed film that also fared well commercially, it started what can be called the first phase of her film career. Apte then went on to feature in a number of Marathi, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam films. She could have continued acting in films, but not one who fears taking risks, the trained Kathak dancer decided to take a break and hone her skills. An exponent of Rohini Bhate for eight years, Apte left for London to pursue Contemporary Dance at Trinity Laban in 2011.
This came at the cost of leaving a few good offers — one of the films she refused in this period went on to become one of 2012’s biggest successes. “But the two-year break, studying the fundamentals of physical movements and the spaces it takes place in, was hugely rewarding,” says Apte. She subsequently moved to Mumbai.
If Apte refuses to be labelled, she backs it up with her willingness to experiment. “I was in class 5 when I wrote and directed my first play, about the subliminal effect of colours on human beings,” she says. This characteristic also reflects in the variety of characters she has played so far. including, her role as the protagonist in Anurag Kashyap’s short film on eve teasing, That Day After Everyday. She will also essay an important character opposite Soumitra Chatterjee in Sujoy Ghosh’s upcoming short film, a thriller set in Kolkata, and will play the protagonist in Anurag Basu’s mini-series for television, an adaptation of Rabindranath Tagore’s Chokher Bali.
Amid all this, Apte has starred in the biggest Marathi grossers, Lai Bhaari. With Riteish Deshmukh in the lead, she did the song-and-dance routine with aplomb. She may not enjoy watching potboilers but “as an actor, my job is to explore these uncomfortable spaces,” she says.
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