It looks like 30-plus and married glam divas are devising new plans to extend their careers in Tollywood and Bollywood. No doubt, actress Samantha romanced Vijay Devarakonda in their latest release “Kushi’ but it will be difficult for her 30-plus colleagues to grab such plum roles. Invariably, Kajal Aggarwal is set to romance Nagarjuna in a new film and do a female-oriented film 'Satyabhama' after motherhood.
Tammanaah romanced 60-plus star Chiranjeevi in “Bhola Shankar’ and won appreciation for her dancing skills in chartbuster ‘Kaavaalaa’ with Rajinikanth in ‘Jailer’. "I did this brief role and song for Rajnikanth sir because sharing screen space with him is a great honor,” she had said. No doubt, a few divas are doing item numbers, and others doing female-centric movies to prolong their acting stint.
Whereas, Shruti Haasan is still holding the fort in Tollywood by playing heroine roles opposite Ravi Teja (Krack), Chiranjeevi (Waltair Veerayya), and Balakrishna (Veera Simha Reddy). “Shruti Haasan hasn’t got officially married and hence retains her oomph factor. She is looking glamorous and quite talented too, so more heroine offers will beckon her,” says producer Lagadapati Sridhar, who bifurcates actresses’ careers into before and after marriage.
“Actresses who are married will have fewer female lead roles over spinster actresses because their charm among viewers will wane after real-life marriages. Another actress who divorced a young actor from a popular Telugu family will have more difficult days ahead because the audience will find it hard to digest her in a first love kind of stuff. Above all, young heroes will avoid working with them,” he points out.
However, married actress Priyamani rules out the argument of marriage, resulting in a dearth of offers. “Frankly, I am enjoying the best phase of my career after marriage with sensational hits like ‘Family Man’ and others including ‘Jawan”. In fact, my husband is my lucky charm,” says the actress, who also negates age-related barriers. “Maybe in earlier days people used to raise such issues, but the viewpoint of the industry has changed and they want only good talent. Filmmakers have opened up and became broad-minded to rope in actresses who can fit into certain roles, irrespective of their married status. In fact, we are offered tailor-made roles to showcase varied shades, which we couldn’t do before marriage. Also, age is also just a number,” she informs.
It seems so, as 40-plus actress Anushka Shetty is doing a film ‘Miss Shetty Mr Polishetty’ with young sensation Naveen Polishetty. While 35-plus actress Anjali is set to do the sequel for the horror comedy ‘Geetanjali’ to revive lady-oriented films.
“It is true that I am repeating actress Anjali for the sequel of ‘Geetanjali’ while changing other actors. She is very talented and easily slips into author-backed roles. I don’t have any qualms about her age because she is quite fit and very talented,” concludes writer-producer Kona Venkat.
