Instagrammed by Ameesha. ( Courtesy: Ameesha Patel
Ameesha Patel, who is gearing up for the release of Gadar 2, opened up about how she was termed "snob" during the initial years of her career. Ameesha Patel, who became an overnight sensation, after the stupendous success of Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai, co-starring Hrithik Roshan, chooses to call herself an "educated outsider". During her recent interaction with Bollywood Hungama, the actor talked about the "jealousy" she faced from her contemporaries. Ameesha Patel also mentioned during the interview that films were taken away without even informing her.
Talking about being termed as "snob", Ameesha said, "When I entered the film industry, I only had film actors' kids or producers' kids enter with me, it was Kareena Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Tushar Kapoor, Esha Deol, Fardeen Khan, you name it, you turn your head and it was a film family third generation person coming in. I was the outsider and I was anyway this south Bombay (girl) looked upon as a snob because I was the educated outsider. I was the one who did not b*tch on sets, I read books, I did not gossip, so I was anyway called a snob because I chose to read."
Ameesha also complained that her contemporaries were "jealous" of her back-to-back successes. Apart from Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai, Ameesha tasted super success with movies like Gadar and Pawan Kalyan's Telugu film Badri in 2000. "Then seeing success after success, seeing Hrithik and me becoming the heartthrob of the nation overnight and then Gadar coming in and then Badri coming in... whether it is Telugu, Tamil or Hindi cinema. God was kind, he knew I didn't have a godfather so he gave me successful films but my contemporaries could not handle that. There was a lot of jealousy, snatching films from under your nose. There was a lot of cutting you off from films which I did not realise at that time that I have signed my films, blocked my dates but suddenly I am not on that set and a few months later someone else is," she said to Bollywood Hungama.
Ameesha Patel also revealed that she was replaced in movies without her knowledge. "A lot of times I was not informed and I have called a lot of 'A' list directors and said to them 'bohot galat kiya aapne (what you did is wrong)'," she said. Ameesha continued, "That was not the age of social media and information didn't go out so fast. We had these film guides and trade guides that came to the offices which we would read and find out what was going on. You really didn't know, like today you know who is on what set (as) everything is posted on Instagram and Twitter. But then it was just that we used to just work in good faith."
Ameesha Patel will reprise her role as Sakeena in Gadar 2. Directed by Anil Sharma, the film is slated to release on August 11 and it will clash with Akshay Kumar and Pankaj Tripathi's OMG 2 at the box office. Gadar 2 will also see Sunny Deol, and Utkarsh Sharma reprising the roles of Tara Singh and Jeete respectively.