Kajal Aggarwal is the newest addition to this list with her entry into Bollywood in Singham, a remake of the hugely successful Tamil Singam. Kajal says she is glad that she bagged a good role for her Bollywood launch vehicle. She says she will be choosy about the kind of movies she will now be doing in Bollywood.
“Sure I am excited but I am not going to grab every single script I get in Bollywood. I want to be identified and remembered for the characters I play rather than for the quantity of films I’ve done,” says Kajal.
Kajal has no qualms about her debut in Bollywood being a remake. “I’ve watched the original in Tamil and really liked the script. When Rohit said he would make a couple of changes to the script to suit the taste of people up north, I thought it would be nice,” she says. Kajal informs that she will take up only those projects that she is comfortable with in Bollywood.
While Bollywood looks good at the moment, Kajal still hasn’t stopped signing films down South. She will be seen in a glamourous role in K V Anand’s Maatran and with Naga Chaitanya in Dhada. She points out that cinema must always portray a picture that’s larger than life, “Cinema is a means to transport you to a different plane altogether.
It’s not meant to be serious or provocative,” she says. She feels cinema has undergone a transformation and there are more directors willing to experiment. “It’s not predictable anymore,” she comments.
Talking about kids who take after their fathers who are in the film industry, Kajal reasons, “If the father is a well-known figure in the film industry, I see nothing wrong in the children taking after them. But even if you have a background in the industry, every newcomer will have to work hard to get to the top. There are no exceptions here,” she says.
Kajal says she admires Rajnikanth and Nagarjuna the most. “I have immense respect and admiration for them. They have worked really hard to get to where they are. They are down to earth and that’s what I like the most,” she says.
Talking about her experience of having worked with different language industries, Kajal observes, “There are some great technicians in the South. Tamil industry is steeped in reality, Telugu portrays a larger than life image and the Kannada industry is a neat blend of reality and fiction.”
Commenting about the Kannada film industry, she says, “Kannada film industry might be small but it reels out some realistic cinema. They have a soul and loads of entertainment. I’d love to do a Kannada movie someday,’’ she sums up.