Sonali Bendre: Despite being the quintessential outsider, I still don’t feel at home

When Sonali Bendre started her career, she had no contacts in the business, but she rose to the occasion and paved her own route in show business. The actress attributes her personality to her background. She adds, “I am the proverbial outsider,” after giving it some thought. My family is really interested in schooling. In addition, the whole family would relocate every two years to a new place where they would start over since my father worked for the government.

I have no buddies from my youth to return to. Although it was uncomfortable at times, living nearly constantly gave her a feeling of freedom. “Being able to be with myself and not need people constantly gave me immense inner strength when I entered this industry,” the woman says in her explanation.
Sonali felt she was different from everyone else while navigating the cutthroat world of Bollywood, and she thinks this provided her an advantage. “I felt very alienated on a movie set where everyone knew one another. I still don’t feel like an insider when the Behls—her husband Goldie Behl’s family—get together and talk about films. Since my viewpoint is still that of an outsider and more in line with the audience, Goldie asks me what I think of a screenplay. As my son Ranveer is now studying overseas, I am becoming more active with our producing company.
The actor has always enjoyed dabbling in many media. She describes her time on stage as follows: “I performed in the well-known drama ‘Tumhari Amrita,’ written by Farooq Shaikh and Shabana Azmi, when I was eight and a half months pregnant. I was afraid because I could not wait to work with these actors. But dread and remorse afterward made me not want to pass up the chance. The goal was to draw lessons from having worked with such a fantastic team.

Sonali, who returned to acting full-time in 2022 after a hiatus with the online series “The Broken News,” is open about her acting anxieties. “I miss having acting training; I never had any. I feel inadequate as an actor because I lack certain skills. “‘The Broken News’ held great significance for me, as I wanted to return with a specific role that would establish the tone for my upcoming chapter, and it has indeed done just that,” she concludes.