Ameesha reveals flip side on having a blockbuster like ‘Gadar’ in filmography ( Photo Credit – Instagram )
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Actress Ameesha Patel made her Bollywood debut with the blockbuster ‘Kaho Naa… Pyaar Hai in 2000, and a year later, she was seen in the mega-blockbuster ‘Gadar: Ek Prem Katha’ in 2001, which she agrees was a game changer for her career but added that it had a flipside too.
“I would definitely agree that Gadar 1 was a game-changer for my career. How can it not be? How can one of India’s most iconic films not change a person’s career graph,” Ameesha told IANS.
With a runtime of two hours and fifty minutes film, ‘Gadar: Ek Prem Katha’ is the second most-watched Hindi film in India since the 1990s. It went on to emerge as the highest-grossing Hindi film since 1994 film ‘Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!’
Ameesha Patel continued, “Having said that, after coming from Kaho Na Pyaar Hai, the first film and then Gadar… summing it up to be even a bigger hit or a colossal giant or Aamir Khan sweetly calls it a monster o a success. It gave me two things. It was a game-changer because, suddenly, it catapulted me as this performer. This college kid can play a mother, which everyone doubted.”
Ameesha shared that not just back then but even today, when the sequel is set to release, people question her about playing a mother on screen.
She added, “They said ‘you are too young too play a mother’, and they doubt it even today for Gadar 2…. They said it back then, and they are saying it today as well. The script is so powerful that I would play a mother again and again.”
But all good things come with a price.
Ameesha Patel said that the benchmark that ‘Gadar: Ek Prem Katha’ set was too high that the success of her other films paled in front of it.
“The flip side of that is that with the adulation, love and respect and the career rising, the benchmark Gadar set was so high that even after I delivered successes in my other films like ‘Humraaz’, ‘Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd’, ‘Race 2’ or ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa’ or pleasant films such ‘Yeh Hai Jalwa’ and successes of Telugu films Mahesh Babu, Pawan Kalyan, Jr NTR…Somehow the benchmark that Gadar set was so high that people’s expectations, I think from all of us not only me, but Sunny, Anil Sharma ji were at such a high level that all our other work failed in comparison to that or rather paled in comparison. So people thought that was it. That was the flipside to seeing such a colossal monster of a success,” the actress said.
‘Gadar 2‘ is set in 1971, and Tara Singh returns to Lahore, Pakistan, in the midst of an anti-India “Crush India” campaign to bring back his son Charanjeet.
