Mothers And Heroines: The Changing Times

Back in the day, whenever a heroine came to a set, her mother used to be present. This is regarding the security of their daughters, as it was thought that the film industry’s work ethic is quite disorderly, and it’s the responsibility of a mother to take care of their daughter from something bad that might happen.

From the 70s to the late 90s, this culture prevailed, and heroines like Kajal and Tamanna were popular; even their mothers were also popular with the media, and sometimes they gave interviews too. But then came a Samantha era, where family members are pretty much absent around her, but an able team of managers, assistants, makeup folks, and helpers are present. That made pretty much a corporate style of functioning around a heroine, and many Bollywood heroines these days follow the trend. Only they arrive with a team but not a mother.

However, the mothers of star heroines like Ananya Panday and others are not turning up on sets, but have now taken on the role of taking care of PR activities, business plans and deal-related stuff around their daughters. Though some mothers, like Sreeleela’s mom, still do turn up on sets, that’s mostly to take care of backend things, but not like sitting by the director and monitoring everything the daughter is doing.

With changing times, more youngsters are looking at the job of heroine as merely a job like anything else, but not like some demons in the glamour industry are going to engulf them.