Fatima Sana Shaikh made her big Bollywood debut with the 2016 blockbuster Dangal. She was seen alongside Sanya Malhotra and Aamir Khan.
She worked with Aamir Khan again in the 2018 film Thugs of Hindostan. She recently opened up about how the box-office failure of the film affected her.
She told Bollywood Bubble, “There was a time when I didn’t want to work. I just wanted to go to Dharamshala, where I had rented a house for three or four months, and live there. My mindset had become such that I wanted to live alone, by the mountains, and open a cafe. I was searching for myself. While I wanted to chase a career and progress professionally, I was also figuring myself out. I didn’t know who I was.”
Fatima further spoke about how she was dropped from films after the failure of Thugs of Hindostan.
She said, “As a director if one of their films flops, it becomes difficult for them to make their next movie. The same is true for actors — you will be removed from a few films. That happened to me too. After Thugs of Hindostan flopped, I was removed from two movies. However, I don’t take these things personally and see them as part of the business. So, I understand why a producer would do that (replace an actor whose recent work didn’t perform well).”
The actress further revealed how she struggles with low esteem, and how director Anurag Basu helped her to overcome it and work on her self-confidence.
She said, “However, even he doesn’t know what he did for me. We were shooting for Ludo, and by then, the production of Thugs of Hindostan had been completed. My confidence was very low. I would check with him for every decision I made as a performer. I couldn’t even tell whether what I was doing was good or not. He said, ‘Don’t doubt yourself this much; you are good. Go with your instincts — your instincts are right.’ Since those words came from someone I look up to, whose work I admire, and whom I believe is one of the best directors for actors, something started changing in me.”
Thugs of Hindostan was directed by Vijay Krishna Acharya. It also had Amitabh Bachchan and Katrina Kaif in key roles.