When Vidya Balan was told, 'Just look at her, does she look like a heroine?’

Mission Mangal actress Vidya Balan opens up about her casting couch experience and also other encounters in the film industry, which allegedly wrecked her confidence

Vidya Balan, who is one of the talented actresses in the Indian film industry, has recently shared some of her worst experiences that she dealt with in the past.

In an interview with a popular entertainment website Pinkvilla, the 40-year-old actress said the journey in the industry hasn't been a smooth ride for the leading lady, she had to face many hardships along with ugly experiences of casting couch.

Vidya Balan, married to Siddharth Roy Kapur, founder of Roy Kapur Films and the President of Film and Television Producers Guild of India, said, "One day I remember I was in Chennai and this director came to meet me. I said let's sit in the coffee shop and he kept insisting that he wants to talk to me and that we should go to the room. I left the door of my room open and he left within five minutes. This incident suddenly struck me today when I'm talking about this."

The actress added, “Someone wrote that ‘Dress like this, she has no business of getting out, she should stay indoors’. That had affected me so much that for the longest time, I would get dreams of it and get really angry. Today, I don’t let the noise get to me.”

Vidya Balan further said, "There was another Tamil film that was agreed upon through a phone call. Things were not organised in the way that they are today...I didn't know any better so I was like okay and committed to doing the film. I land up in Chennai and I shot with him for a day and I really felt uncomfortable with the kind of humour that was present in the film. I left the film and then they sent me a legal notice."

Vidya Balan's difficult time while dealing with rejection: "There were a lot of rejections down south. There were a lot of Malayalam films, but I was replaced in each of them. There was a Tamil film I was working on and I was thrown out of the film...I remember my parents had come with me because they were so worried about me...I had really begun to fade. We went to the producer's office. The producer showed us the clippings from the film and he said, 'Just look at her, does she look like a heroine. He said, 'I was not in favour of taking her at all, it was the director who insisted'."

Vidya Balan said that she had a difficult time dealing with rejection. "I felt ugly...I felt like sh*t for months and I don't think I looked at myself in the mirror... I didn't like what I saw because I thought I was ugly... For the longest time, I did not forgive that man, but today, thanks to that I realised that I have to love and accept myself the way I am."

Vidya Balan was last seen in Mission Mangal with Akshay Kumar, which turned out to be a massive blockbuster at the box office. She will next seen in Shakuntala Devi biopic.