Aditi Rao Hydari: When I started off, I just wanted to be a Mani Ratnam heroine

Aditi Rao Hydari over a career spanning 15 years has made sure to dabble in films of different languages, instead of sticking to only Hindi. From the National Award winning Kaatru Veliyidai to her latest Hey Sinamika, the actor confesses that the entire reason why she became an actor was to work with director Mani Ratnam. Her dream was fulfilled with Kaatru…

“I just wanted to be a Mani Ratnam heroine. When I had this dream of being an actor, it seemed like an impossible dream. But somewhere in my head I was like one day I have to do a Tamil film. I was determined that If and ever It happens, I will just work so hard, like class 10 and 12 board exams so I can enjoy the process of being directed by this incredible person,” she recalls.

The 35-year-old says from then on, she was willing to take up work in any language. Hydari continues, “Somewhere at the back of my head my dream was so strong that I knew it would be possible to get out of my comfort zone in terms of language and put myself out there, take up the challenge and be ready for It.”

Consciously preparing for them hence was her natural next step, without any inkling of whether things will happen or not. “Ever since Katru... happened, something actually became clear to me, which was that films are stories and at the core of it, you tell them on celluloid because they made you feel something. Stories are universal, and I didn’t want language to come in the way of anything. Feelings don’t have language. If you can make somebody feel something, whether you speak that language or are from that culture, country, you are theirs and they are yours,” Hydari ends.