Bollywood Gossip: Actress Paoli Dam, who makes her Bollywood debut in ‘Hate Story’, says she thinks bold. Being bold is not in the body. It is in the mind. What’s the big dealin showing a bare back, unhooking a bra or flashing the panties?Who is saying that I am the new Mallika Sherawat of Bollywood? Neither Vivek nor Vikram said it. Then who is spreading this? It’s not for nothing that Vikram Bhatt has begun to address Paoli Dam as “Ms Damn Good”. Her “Hate Story” dialogues – “Main iss shehar ki sabse badi randi banna chahti hoon (I want to be the biggest whore in the city)” and “I f**k those who f**k with me” – have sent ripples across board. If that’s what she says on screen, her off screen bytes are equally upfront. The Tollywood actor, who is making her Bollywood debut in Vivek Agnihotri’s “HS”, says her job is to perform and the director and producer are to answer questions regarding the censorship issues of the film.
“I don’t understand this whole commotion about wearing bikinis or flashing panties. Haven’t I done all that before? But yes, the difference is in the way those same scenes have been shot in this film. I am an actor and the camera needs to make me look beautiful on screen when I am shooting those scenes,” she insists.
It’s not about how much you expose as much as how much the camera can make the viewers imagine about the exposure quotient,” Paoli Dam says, before insisting that despite the sexy trailer, the film is not graphic in terms of nudity. And it certainly is no patch in terms of its sexual content if compared to her controversial full frontal love making scene in Vimukthi Jayasundara’s “Chatrak”.
Ask her about the fact that she apparently had no inhibitions about shooting any sex scenes in front of the full crew and she says, “It’s a cliche to say I don’t have inhibitions. But whatever I shot for this film was with my clothes on. There is no nudity as such in “HS”.
It is a thriller and at the most, there are intimate scenes. Vivek, I’d say, has treated those intimate scenes very aesthetically. As a director, Vivek is someone who always tells people: ‘Mere eyeline ke samne se hat jao’. That automatically means he doesn’t like to have a crowd while we are shooting.”
As far as sensuality goes, Paoli Dam feels it’s about time for Bollywoodto grow up. “There was a time in Hindi cinema when women commanded a sensual presence. Not every heroine who did that had to shed their clothes. Look at Rekha and her sensuality. It’s her body language, her look and the way she carried herself on screen. Somewhere down the line, Bollywood movies turned women into mere props. But now, things are changing and more so, with the success of Vidya Balan‘s recent films. I think, it’s the best time for me to be making my Hindi film debut. Contemporary Bollywood’s conception of being bold is dated!
Being bold is not about unhooking a bra. It is about the thought. My sensuality lies in my eyes and not my bare back,” she insists. Tell her that her trailers of ‘HS’ are making people say that she is the next Mallika Sherawat of Bollywood and she says, “Who is saying that?
