MUMBAI: Neha Dhupia has been living her life on her own terms, without caring about what others think, be it her career choices, or now getting back into a shape she desired. But she shares that others definitely had a lot to say, and sometimes even give unwarranted advice.

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The pressure on female actors to look a certain way, is real, she says, “There are lots of times when you go to even a film party. Whatever you do, every two minutes somebody in the room will walk up to you and start giving you fitness advice. Somebody would say ‘aap yeh kar lo, you can lose weight, get on this diet, have some great trainers’... I am not asking for advice! I just wanted to be left alone, and take my time. I put on 23kgs, I am now down the same weight. I was happy in my skin.”

She goes on to add, “Now when I look back at my pics, I feel ‘ughh’, it was too much for me. But I was comfortable then. I have always been a runner. When people were giving me advice ‘marriage, yeh kar lo, abhi bauhaut ho gaya’, there was too much BS flying around. Many were taking jabs, I was getting trolled about my weight . It didn’t matter. Bright people would start commenting my weight gain. Nameless, faceless trolls, keep them aside. It affected me when intelligent people would do the same. If you can do this to get under my skin, what are you going to do to other plus size women? One one hand you say the film industry is an inclusive place and want us to be comfortable.”

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Dhupia is soon set to make her international and web debut, and the reason we bring this up is because the actor felt ‘free’ working on the former- free from stereotypes, free from judgements. “My battles have been different. I was able to see myself on the big screen and say ‘it’s too large a size’ The pressure was external and internal. Hamari wiring aisi hoti hai film industry mein aake, no matter what you do... atleast in the beginning in my 20s, I was out of the box soon. But it is frightening, you are a copy of everyone initially. The minute you are out of it, you are free and start making your choices. You are able to love your life because you are doing everything for yourself. It is okay to leave your children with your partner and do an international film. I was so free while shooting my international film, because very few people in the cast knew who I was. And I a partner like Angad who said ‘I will take care of the kids’, and I could shoot. That makes a lot of difference,” she ends.

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Credits - Hindustan Times