Actor Soha Ali Khan said that she decided to dip her toes in the world of films without telling either of her parents, Sharmila Tagore and Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi, because she knew that they wouldn’t approve. She debuted as an actor with the Bengali film Iti Srikanta in 2004, which went off as well as she could’ve hoped, but her Hindi debut, Dil Maange More, didn’t go as smoothly. Sharmila found out about Soha’s decision on a flight, after a friend of hers told her about it.
In an interview posted on the Quorum YouTube channel, Soha recalled a bad review that she got for her performance in the film, which offended her father more than her. “The Bengali film was good; the first Hindi film, not so good. I remember the first review that came out in one of the papers was that ‘she looks like her mother, but acts like her father’. My father was the one who was the most offended by it, because he was like, ‘What does this mean?’”
But, Soha said, it is important to develop a thick skin in the film industry. “I was always a straight-A student, I was doing very well in Citi Group, I was doing very well in the world, and to get a review that is not flattering, and for it to be read by everyone is quite mortifying.” Her mother, Sharmila Tagore, who was also a part of the interview, chipped in with her own opinions about negative press.
She said, “If you’re in this profession, you have to deal with the publicity and what other people are saying about you… You can’t take everyone on. How I dealt with it was to not read all this first thing in the morning. By the time somebody else came and told me this is what they are saying about you, it hurt less. On the other hand, they also built you up into this nymph-like figure, as if you’re not a human being at all. It’s either this or brickbats, and you have to keep a level head.”
Soha is best known for her roles in Rang De Basanti, the Saheb Biwi Aur Gangster movies, and most recently, the web series Kaun Banegi Shikharwati and Hush Hush.
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Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi was ‘offended’ when a reviewer wrote that Soha ‘looks like her mother but acts like her father’ – The Indian Express
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