It is common knowledge that film personalities muff no opportunity to hog the limelight, even if they are not entitled to any.
It is, therefore, a pleasant surprise that an accomplished actress like Tabu has declined an invitation from the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia to deliver a few lectures on Indian films and acting.
And to think that Tabu had won the national award for her performance in “Chandni Bar”!
And not long ago there was a report in the newspapers that when he was offered a film role, none other than Amitabh Bachchan himself had recommended to the producer that Tabu was the fittest person to play the heroine in the film with him, and, following the producer’s consent, Bachchan was reported even to have rung up Tabu in connection with the film!
Yet, she is believed to have argued that she did not think she was qualified to address such a prestigious college.
According to one version, Tabu loves what she does in films, but she yet believes that it does not make her an expert to lecture about Indian films.
How come she got invited by such a prestigious institution, in the first instance?
The proximate cause of her invitation is said to be that her role of “Aushima” in Mira Nair’s celebrated film “The Namesake” made her very popular in the United States.
While on Tabu, it is a measure of the maturity of the 38-year-old actress that she is reported to have refused to play the role of a younger woman.
She is playing the character of Tishyarakshitra, Emperor Asoka’s wife, in the film “The Legend of Kunal”. In some scenes she was to have been shown younger, but she put her foot down on the move.
Chandraprakash Dwivedi, director of the film, has revealed that “before Tabu refused to look younger, she had planned to make both Amitabh Bachchan and Tabu lose years on the screen. Making Bachchan look younger in flashback would have been infinitely more difficult. Yet, our make-up artists from abroad had told us it could be done. With Tabu the process would have been much easier because she can look like a 20-year-old without much effort. Yet she refused to look younger, and even suggested that we engage a younger actress to play her character when she was young. We, therefore, gave up plans to make Amitabh and Tabu look younger.