Dear, actor

From theatre via the vast land of Indian advertisement, Swara Bhaskar the actress emerging with Madholal Keep Walking, has recently landed in the ‘free market of Bollywood,’ as she likes to call it. Born, brought up and educated in Delhi, she says she is the pucca Dilliwalli.  Trained in Bharatanatyam for the largest part of her childhood, she did her Masters in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, or as she would tell you, “while pretending to study Sociology, I began to do theatre with IPTA-JNU and N.K. Sharma’s Act One.”

Acting was a ‘dear thing’ to her from the very beginning – though not a storyteller herself, she revels in being where stories are told and being in them herself. She explains, “I love everything about being an actor – the brilliant dynamic energy of this industry. All the nautanki inside me gets an outlet – and I enjoy the creative process that it entails.”

She likes to read the cinematic fiction of Gabriel García Márquez and Nadine Gordimer, saying, “I tend to be very visual with what I read. I see what I read. And I approach every script and role first as a text. All my three scripts so far have been full of notes and scribbles in the margins. Sometimes, I end up going beyond the script and the parameters of my character start imagining all kinds of possibilities where none exist in the director’s mind.”

Her love for acting spills over into the love for the city which makes and breaks big dreams, Mumbai: “This city has given me a roof on my head and enough work to pay my bills! I will thank it in my acceptance speech when  I win an award!”