Mahima Chaudhry: I did compromise on the quality of films I did in my career

Mahima Chaudhry may not be too active on the work front, but she is certainly not forgotten. “I am not in your face but I am definitely in memory because of the films and songs,” says the actor, who has starred in Pardes (19997) and Dhadkan (2000), among others.

She adds, “Some songs have such a great shelf life, like Do Dil, Yeh Mera India (both from Pardes), which is played on Independence Day, every year little children perform in schools… these kind of things have kept me in memory. People who were my age, watching my first film in college and just beginning their romance, they connect, they are my age now.”

Chaudhry, who was sometime back conferred an honorary doctorate by a university, for her contribution to the entertainment world, has been away from the field for five years now. Ask her why and she says she didn’t want to “lose her patience and do something average”.

The 47-year-old elaborates, “As an actor, you are always keen to do something. Now, especially with OTT becoming so popular, the platforms are getting bigger and bigger, the audience number is increasing. I do get scripts, but as an actor you are so ambitious, you just want to wait for the correct one.”

And the reason, she is willing to wait is that she has taken some rash decision in the past.

“I did compromise on the quality of films I did. You just want to stay busy sometimes. At that time, when I started off, if you didn’t do five films a year, you were not successful. They used to say paanch filmon mein se ek hit ho jaayegi. Everybody hence used to have even 10 releases a year, whoever had most number (of releases)got more hits. That was the era,” she recounts.

But, things, have changed now. “You pick up subjects, make noise for a whole year about that and survive. Money has got bigger as well,” she observes.