Shefali Shah has called out ageism in Bollywood. In a recent interview, the actress questioned why it is okay for an actor in the film industry to be of any age when actresses have a ‘shelf life’. She argued
that everyone wants to cast a heroine who is between 18 to 25 years of age and called it “sad”.
“It should not be the norm, but sadly, our industry is about ‘hero, heroine, villain’ and hero has to be whatever number of years actually, but heroine has to only be between 18 to 25. That is very important. She can’t age. She has a shelf life,” she told Hindustan Times.
“There I went and played a character which was much older than me and I did it because, as an actor the point of being an actor is to act out different people and portray different shades of a person. Age was just a part of it, but sadly, it doesn’t work like that,” the actress added.
Interestingly, this comes at a time when Ranveer Singh (40) has also been facing backlash for romancing 20-year-old actor Sara Arjun in Dhurandhar.
Recently, Dhurandhar casting director Mukesh Chhabra also reacted to Ranveer and Sara’s age gap and justified it, saying it was ‘required’.
“I got a very clear brief. The story is that he is trying to trap her. So, we knew that we wanted a young girl who is 20-21 years old. And when part 2 comes, whoever is talking about the age gap will get all the answers. It’s not like we don’t have good actors in that 26-27 years of age group; we have good actors. But this was (age gap) required in the film. Everything you can’t explain to people. When I was also reading about the age gap, I was laughing. According to the film’s brief, it is correct,” he told Free Press Journal.
