Actresses of all shades have tried their luck on the hallowed shores of Hollywood. Aishwarya Rai, for instance, did a number of movies ranging from The Pink Panther 2 to Provoked.
But, despite her allure and branding, she didn’t make any mark over there. Then there was the starlet Mallika Sherawat who seemed to have suddenly made Los Angeles her home but, other than a bit role in a Jackie Chan movie, had nothing to show for her ambitions.
Freida Pinto got a great break with Slumdog Millionaire and has managed to get some decent roles but she suffers from a lack of ability in jumping to the big league.
The latest is Priyanka Chopra, who seems to have taken an interesting route to Hollywood. She first made a limited mark as a pop singer, something she had not even tried in India. And now Quantico, a television show that has her as its lead character, has just started to air in the United States. It is not a marginal achievement. Quantico is from the stables of ABC, one of the big networks there. And many a Hollywood star like George Clooney and Jennifer Aniston have first hit the limelight through TV shows.
So, this is probably a good way to go about it if she wants to make her base there. That is actually good thinking. As of now Priyanka is not doing too badly in Bollywood. She does one or two movies a year and so far they seem to be working.
Last year there was Gunday and Mary Kom, both superhits. This year, Dil Dhadakne Do did well. On the other hand there is also the fact that she is 33 and that is an age when Bollywood stops being kind to actresses.
Priyanka can do offbeat movies but the regular commercial fares that are at the soul of Bollywood, will not be available for her. Hollywood actresses however peak when they are in their 30s.
It is almost certain that after Quantico, Priyanka will get a number of offers for Hollywood movies. What kind of choices she makes will decide if her career will have a second and bigger innings. Given how shrewd she has always been with her career choices, it is possible that such an eventuality will come to pass.
Question time
A set of circumstances have led to a rather interesting fallout. One is the fact that Aishwarya Rai’s return vehicle Jazbaa is set to hit the screens. She is looking quite svelte again and the movie seems to be an action thriller revolving around her.
Then there is the fact that Salman Khan has decided that he will once again return as the host for the next season of the reality show Bigg Boss. In the show, stars come to promote the movies that are about to be released. Salman and Aishwarya haven’t been on speaking terms with each other for more than a decade when their affair had gone sour under rather bitter circumstances.
At a recent event, Salman was asked whether Aishwarya would come to promote Jazbaa in his show. He, of course, didn’t answer and sidetracked the question with a weak pun on the movie’s name.
Blame it on me
Recently there was somewhat of a ruckus when the jury that decides the Indian submission for the Oscars got together.
They selected Court, a Marathi film much acclaimed by critics but not before there was falling out within the jury members. Filmmaker Rahul Rawail resigned and on Twitter called the jury’s chairman Amol Palekar obnoxious.
At the time a number of movies were in the reckoning including Bajrangi Bhaijaan, the Salman Khan blockbuster.
After Court was announced as the selection, Salman was asked about what his thoughts were about his movie missing out on it. He said that it had never entered his calculations and that he made movies for his audience to enjoy.
He can afford t be so casual and magnanimous when it comes to Bajrangi Bhaijaan because the movie performed beyond everyone’s expectation at the box office, becoming the second largest revenue raker of all time.
But Salman won’t be feeling so nice about Hero, another movie connected to him. Granted that he didn’t act in it and was only the producer but still Hero becoming a flop would be jarring.
In one interview Salman, while taking the blame on himself, said that the director Nikhil Advani didn’t get it right. That he himself had had no time to get involved except at the editing stage, by when there was not much he could do. And that there was too much of spectacle in the movie with the human drama somewhat absent.
He said he should have been more hands-on with the movie. The good thing, he says, is that the careers of the two new stars — Sooraj Pancholi and Athiya Shetty — will take off since they got noticed. It is too early to tell on that too, given that neither showed any real spark in Hero.
Friends no more
So apparently Aamir Khan and Salman Khan are not as close as they once were. Reports of a falling out have started appearing regularly in the gossip pages now.
The reason for it is said to be a petty squabble soon after Aamir saw Bajrangi Bhaijaan at a special screening. While Aamir has been quite vociferous about how much he liked the movie, he seems to have gone a bit overboard in telling Salman that he should have done movies like this a long time ago.
This apparently irked Salman and led to a bitter exchange. It didn’t help matters when later Aamir is said to have told the media that he had been offered the movie first and had been in some way responsible for Salman doing it.
How much of it is true, we don’t know, but given the persistent nature of these rumours, it is likely that there is some cooling of relations between the two.
Pity that superstars can’t keep their egos in check. But, given the history of tiffs and patch-ups between the three Khans of Bollywood these two might also make truce at some point.
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