We take you back to Alia Bhatt’s brilliant performance in Highway. Subhash K Jha shares a fantastic interview with Alia from when the drama, directed by Imtiaz Ali, was released in 2014.
Suddenly, 2013 had a new female star. Mahesh Bhatt and Soni Razdan’s youngest-born, Alia Bhatt, has gone from the baby from the family to the babe of Bollywood in no time at all. Alia laughed, “It has been a pretty tumultuous year for me. Yes, it was a decisive year. It was a year that I’d remember mainly for shooting Highway.”
Alia says Highway put her life into a perspective. “It helped me to connect with the person within me. My father (filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt) always said the day an actor finds oneness with the person within is the day he or she becomes a true actor. I think I found that person during Highway. I don’t know how much it helped me to grow as an actor. But the film got me to know things about myself that I didn’t know.”
Having played a fashionable airhead in Karan Johar’s Student Of The Year – Kareena Kapoor’s Poo multiplied by 2—Alia went on to a gruelling, gut-wrenching physically and emotionally exhausting film with Imtiaz Ali.
Speaking about the career-defining episode, Alia says, “It was very difficult. I realize other actors probably come to something like Imtiaz Ali’s Highway after maybe 6-7 films behind them. When Imtiaz offered me the role, I was surprised. I’ve had no training in acting at all, and that, in a way, proved an advantage. Imtiaz was able to mould my personality in the way he wanted. So a lack of training proved an advantage for this film.”
Alia roughed it out on the Highway project, traveling on road, to eating at roadsides, living a nomad’s existence during the film’s shooting.
“I never thought it would be what it turned out to be. Highway has helped me to evolve as a person and an actor. It was…therapeutic!I felt so connected with the surroundings. It was both physically and emotionally challenging. The role made me push boundaries within myself, which I didn’t know existed. Until you push yourself, you don’t know how tough you are. By the end of the shooting, I was comfortable sitting on the road and eating and sleeping under a tree. By the end of the film, I didn’t miss my comfortable bed at home.”
Alia has so far led a pretty sheltered life. “I’d say the girl I played in Student Of The Year was closer home. Highway took me to a different world. Not that I have never been away from home. I’ve been to boarding school where we didn’t lead sheltered lives. And I’ve been for trekking with my mom. But nothing prepared me for the life that I experienced in Highway.”
