It was my dream to be an actor: Sayani Gupta

Sayani Gupta, who was recently seen in ‘Four More Shots Please’, has been in the movies for over a decade now. In a new interview, the actress revealed that she had a high-paying corporate job at the age of 21, which she quit. Sayani shared that it was her dream to be an actor, despite serious opposition from her mother and thus, she wanted to get into FTII (Film and Television Institute of India, Pune).

“My mom said, ‘I am going to slit my wrist if you go and she couldn’t believe it’,” she shared in a chat on ‘Cyrus Says’. Sayani recalled that her mother raised her single-handedly and she couldn’t believe that Sayani would give up a high-paying job to study films. “I was bored out of my skull for one and a half years. I made a lot of money because I was a workaholic, but this isn’t what I saw for myself,” she said. Sayani was seen in films such as ‘Jolly LLB 2’, ‘Pagglait’, ‘Article 15’, ‘Axone’ and many others.

Sayani said that while her father was supportive, he was actually a friendly figure in her life, with her mother being the decision maker. So much so that her mother didn’t speak to her for a month after she got into FTII. Sayani recalled that her mother would refer to actors as ‘prostitutes’ and her biggest ‘fear’ was that her daughter would become an actor. “All my life, growing up, she didn’t let me go to theatre rehearsals and locked me in my room, saying actors are prostitutes. That was the idea of actors that she had,” she shared.

Sayani recalled that her mother eventually came around when she visited her at FTII and got offers to star in five student films within a few minutes, as there was a dearth of older actors on campus. She accepted three of those parts and after acting in one such film, she told Sayani, “Maybe if you have to do this for the next two years, it’s not so bad, either.”

Sayani Gupta, in the same chat, hinted that after the fourth season of ‘Four More Shots Please’, the makers might plan a movie, much like ‘Mirzapur’, which is getting a film after three seasons. But she added that their film would depend on how ‘Mirzapur’ performs.