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Unlike Kareena Kapoor and Sonam Kapoor who were launched by paranoid filmmakers, Shatrughan Sinha’s svelte daughter Sonakshi is having a blast. For some strange reason, people like J.P. Dutta and Sanjay Leela Bhansali equated secretiveness with success and hence kept their celebrity discoveries wrapped up in no-media clauses until release time. It didn’t really help their debut releases, Refugee and Saawariya, at the box office.
But Aditya Chopra pulled it off with his new girl Anushka Sharma, when nobody got a whiff of what she was like right until Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi was released. The film clicked and Anushka is now in the US shooting another Yashraj film opposite Shahid Kapoor, apart from signing on as the leading lady of Patiala House, a new Akshay Kumar film. In stark contrast, it took Kareena years to make the grade after her flop debut while Sonam Kapoor managed to notch up only another no-show with Delhi 6.
The point is, it doesn’t really matter whether a new discovery is kept under wraps or she’s known to the public before her debut film. It’s the film itself and the actor’s charisma that really matter. After all, Raj Kapoor happily kept the doors open when Bobby was being shot and it didn’t stop either the film or its lead actors from succeeding. Similarly, Deepika Padukone and Aishwarya Rai were immensely popular faces before they wandered into Hindi films and the exposure didn’t prove a deterrent to their success stories.
The same goes for the new boys too. Both Ranbir Kapoor and Harman Baweja were hidden from the media by their respective directors. Ranbir became a star despite the failure of his first film while the Bawejas kept Harman’s photographs so close to their chest that nobody is interested in him anymore.
Therefore, there are no real rules for stardom. It’s a director’s privilege to save his discovery for a grand introduction but that does not necessarily translate into brisk sales at the box office. Nor does it mean sure-fire stardom.
But ensuring that a particular look is not leaked out too prematurely is something that almost all filmmakers are discreet about today. Nobody saw Aishwarya Rai’s Jodhaa look until Ashutosh Gowariker was ready to unveil her elaborate Neeta Lulla wardrobe. Shah Rukh Khan’s moustache was a big Yashraj secret until the first look of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and the promos were officially given out.
In the Sinha household itself, father and daughter are going through the same experience today. The Salman Khan family is keeping Sonakshi’s look and role in her debut film Dabaang far away from the public glare, but they’re not keeping her away from the media. As mom Poonam Sinha appropriately put it, “Sonakshi is already almost a celebrity. Everybody knows what she looks like.” She was recently on the cover of a new magazine called Avant Garde where she chirped about several things, including the fact that she’s sure nobody will ever see her in a bikini! But Sonakshi is totally discreet about what she’s doing in Dabaang. She had a look test recently but that’s all being kept under wraps.
Funnily, while Sonakshi is still to debut (shooting starts later this month), dad Shatrughan Sinha who has more than 35 years of stardom behind him is also going through the same thrill of keeping a secret.
Ram Gopal Verma has signed Shatrughan Sinha to play an N.T. Rama Rao kind of neta’s role in Rakta Charitra, his new film. As the title itself suggests, it’s a strong Godfather-meets-Mahabharat kind of political film, with Shatru playing a very central role in it.
The whisper is that Sinha will be presented during the first schedule in Hyderabad in a never-before-seen look. Ramu is totally charged about working with SS and maybe, just maybe, the Bihari actor will feature in all three versions of Rakta Charitra — in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu!
Psst!
Ramu’s got a super song recorded for Rakta Charitra with Sukhwinder Singh of Jai ho fame. The filmmaker recently booked the singer for six full days. He explained the whole sequence to him and got the singer to sing a full-throated title number that is even more haunting than the Govinda, Govinda... background song of Sarkar. “We recorded it here in Mumbai in my studio. It’s a lucky studio. All my recordings here have been super hits, including Jai ho,” revealed Sukhwinder quite unabashedly. Obviously, everybody’s hoping for an encore out here.
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