THE EFFORTLESS BRILLIANCE OF SANYA MALHOTRA

Be it a Dangal fight or a game of Ludo, this part-Pataakha-part-Pagglait actor is here for the win. She made her debut in an Aamir Khan film and seven years and eleven films later, she is paired with Shah Rukh Khan. But Sanya Malhotra, whose 31-year-old shoulders are strong enough to carry an entire film, is hardly the arm-candy heroine. This Delhi girl has built an enviable career in the movies replete with some brilliant performances and proved that with talent, determination, and a little bit of luck, it is very much possible for an ‘outsider’ to achieve that big Bollywood dream

- ANANYA GHOSH

At the auditions, she was told that if she gets through, she will have to chop off her hair. For a 24-year-old girl who had left her home over a year back to pursue her Bollywood dream of becoming an actress, this would have worked as an instant deterrent. And it did for most other girls who had queued up for that audition — but not for Sanya Malhotra. Losing her precious curly mane was too small a price to pay for the opportunity she would be getting in return. “Baal hai, ug jayenge, par aisi opportunity nahi milegi,” she thought. But eventually, she would be faced with a bigger concern. “For the first three months, while we were prepping for the film, we were not allowed to disclose to anyone that we have been finalised for the movie, the news was totally kept under wraps. There would be speculative articles in the media every now and then and both Fatima and I would really get worried if we were still in the movie or been replaced by some bigger actors. It was a huge opportunity for us; in fact, it was too good to be true, and we were scared of it slipping away from our hands,” Sanya recalls.

Instead of making her debut as a quintessential Bollywood heroine, dolled up in chiffon sarees romancing some hero on the snowy Alps, she made her maiden appearance on the big screen in a spandex singlet as a Haryanvi wrestler. She knew this movie will change her life and break open the doors that had so far walled her dreams. And it did. Nitesh Tiwari’s Aamir Khan-starrer biographical sports drama film Dangal (2016), became the highest grossing Indian film worldwide, a record that was broken only this year by Shah Rukh Khan’s