Yami Gautam has been on a roll. Over the last four years, the actress has delivered hits and garnered appreciation from critics and fans for her performances in a variety of roles. Her latest release Lost is yet another title in a growing list where her performance and the choice of a ‘different’ subject have been praised. In a chat with DNA, the actress opens up about her career, how things changed for her post-Uri, and times when she did not enjoy work.
Lost, which released on Zee5 earlier this month, has seen Yami being praised for her performance by countless people. But the actress tells us which has been the most special one so far. She says, “I consider my father my biggest critic ever since my first work when I came on screen. My mother also always has her own perspective. But my father is a little extra critical. When he watched the film, I was in Chandigarh because I got this seasonal flu and I had to head back home. So, after watching the film he came out and said, ‘bahut achi actress ban gayi ho, kaise ban gayi’. The way he said it really stayed with me.”
Yami debuted with Vicky Donor in 2012. Before that, she had been a successful model. After more than a decade in the industry, the actress says she still gets jitters and butterflies in her stomach before release day. “I still get anxious and I think it will always be there because of the nature of the unpredictability of the business. I am mostly aligned with the audience. When I watch my film, I can almost gauge if the audience will like it or not. So far, at least but still there are surprises and you don’t want to be on the other side of it,” says Yami.
For the longest time in her career, Yami had been, possibly unfairly, been shoehorned into the image of a glamorous heroine who could not do ‘serious’ roles. Reacting to that, Yami likes to point out that she started her film career with a ‘serious’ substantial role. “It’s so strange because if you look back at my first film – Vicky Donor, it was one of the most substantial roles that a debutant can get,” she says, adding, “And that is how I announced myself that this is the kind of cinema I want to associate myself with and that I am here to perform. But people forgot that very easily.”
However, Yami admits that partly, that shift in perception was due to the kind of films that she did for a while. She recalls, “That did not resonate with the choices I got to make through my films. We are as good as our previous Friday. That is what happened for a really long time.” In fact, during this period, she was even told once that she was ‘too pretty’ for a role, which she says was a ‘polite’ way of rejecting her.
The actress mentions doing films where she did not feel she was comfortable or ones she wasn’t convinced about fully. She reminisces, “I don’t regret but I do remember the feeling of not enjoying your work, and that’s not a good feeling. When you are not excited to wake up but just tense, when you are just not happy doing what you are! Then you turn around and wonder I could have learnt a skill in that time but then it’s easier to say it now. Back then, people said you’d be ‘out of sight, out of mind’, you have to do something. I would say this doesn’t have script but people said I can’t be so choosy. Maybe that advice was correct for that time. But when you are not enjoying what you are doing, it’s a very suffocating feeling. It will never help you grow.”
Looking back, she calls it a choice she made based on advice but not one she would make again. “Today also it’s my bread and butter and I need to pay bills, but if the same situation comes will I make those choices? No, I won’t. I can’t guarantee about every film of mine being great or talked about but in my heart, I will never do anything which I am not convinced about,” the actress sums up.
