Veteran Bollywood actress Farida Jalal has been in the industry for almost 50 years. She immortalised mother and grandmother roles in the 90s and early 2000s and even endeared herself to little kids with the show Shararat, where she played a fairy. Long before Farida Jalal started taking on elderly roles, she usually used to play the sister or rejected fiancée of the male lead in the 60s and 70s. When asked about being typecast in such roles, she has said that it started with Gopi where she agreed to play Dilip Kumar’s sister when no one else wanted the role. Over the years, she became a renowned and recognised actress, but Farida Jalal recently expressed her displeasure towards the film industry. In an interview, she conveyed her disappointment at being consistently offered roles limited to mothers and grandmothers. She expressed the view that her male counterparts like Anupam Kher and Amrish Puri had the chance to portray a broader range of characters beyond roles as fathers and grandfathers in Hindi cinema.
“I’m eagerly awaiting a challenging role that allows me to demonstrate my versatility. It’s disheartening that filmmakers often perceive me solely as capable of portraying roles limited to mother or grandmother figures on screen. I yearn to undertake more stimulating and diverse roles. My male counterparts, from the late Amrish Puri to Anupam Kher, had the opportunity to portray a wide array of characters, including villains and comedians, with great success. They weren’t confined to playing just fatherly or grandfatherly roles on screen, unlike my own experience where I’ve often been boxed into a single category,” Farida Jalal said.
The 75-year-old actress was last seen on the big screen in Saif Ali Khan’s Jawani Jaaneman in 2020 and Ittu Si Baat in 2022. She then made her OTT debut with the Netflix period drama Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
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