We’re aware of actor Minissha Lamba’s memorable roles in ‘Corporate’, ‘Bachna Ae Haseeno’, ‘Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd’, ‘Lamhaa’ and ‘Kidnap’. But we don’t know about her journey from modelling to acting, what went on behind the scenes and how things fell into place in her career. In an interview, she recalled her initial struggle saying,
“No one wanted to manage me. They gave excuses about how they are busy as they felt my debut [Yahaan] was an art-house kind of a movie. They did not want to put the energies into me. Everything I did was on my own. I did not have anyone pitching for me.”
Times Now News quoted her saying,
“Despite all that, I do feel there was a luck factor involved. People who wanted to work with me called me themselves. I got a call from Yashraj. Whatever work I did with Excel was because I had got a call from them. No one told them to take her. When I look back, the struggle was decent. It would be wrong for me to say that I struggled. Things fell into the place, in a way I had not expected honestly.”
Recalling her big break in cinema she said,
“I feel initially I got very lucky. I do feel was blessed when I was doing a bit of modelling in Delhi, that’s when Soojit Sircar was after me. I was not sure that acting was something I would want to do, but to him, he had found his Adaa in Yahaan. It took about six months to convince me.”
“When I came to Mumbai, Yahaan didn’t get the kind of reception theatrically that we had all hoped. The 26th July floods happened in Mumbai and it occurred a couple of days before my movie released. The theatres were flooded out. It did not get the kind of response, of people coming to the theatre as the city had suffered a huge tragedy. I did not know anybody. I went to the biggest secretaries at that time to manage me. They did not want to put the energies into me”.
Reading about the journeys of others gives everyone hope and inspiration for their own too, don’t you think?