Ratna Pathak Shah on women being typecast in the 70s, says Smita Patil, Shabana Azmi were mostly sad or angry

Ratna Pathak Shah has a remarkable acting career to look back on, which spans across almost four decades. The actress recently opened up about the impact comedic roles helped in shaping her career, and how there was a time in the industry where women found themselves being typecast.

In conversation with Pinkvilla, the actress spoke of how there had been a time when she doubted her skills when work was difficult to come by. In 1984 Anand Mahendroo had offered her a role in Idhar Udhar, which also starred her sister Supriya Pathak. She recalled how there had been a serious role and the role of a ‘dumb blonde’ type of character, and Ratna was worried that she would get the former. To her surprise, Anand had offered her the other role, and the actress was happy to get a challenging role she had never attempted before. She said she would forever be grateful to Aanand for the role saying that comedy had saved her life.

The actress said that doing comedy had made her realise that there was much more to acting than just ‘crying and shouting loudly’. She realised that comedy required a lot of skill, hard work and planning as well, and that training for it was a continuous process.

She spoke of how films in the 1970s and 80s featured female characters who just looked sad and angry most of the time. “What did poor Smita Patil and Shabana Azmi do? Either they cried or they were angry all the time”, said Ratna.

The actress went on to speak of how filmmakers had a stereotypical way of looking at women characters, always choosing to tell stories of women who go through some kind of trauma.

Ratna will next be seen in the film Dhak Dhak, in which she will share the screen with Dia Mirza, Fatima Sana Shaikh and Sanjana Sanghi.