Bollywood actress, Sonali Bendre needs no introduction. She has already set goals with her acting sense and dancing skills to many young stars, who are stepping in the world of glam and glitz. Moreover, it was her journey against the deadliest disease, cancer, that was also a big inspiration to many. However, do you know that Sonali was never a trained dancer or actor? Now, she opened up about the same and revealed many unknown facts from her acting and dancing career.
In an interview with Mid-Day, Sonali Bendre opened up about being a part of multiple films and dance numbers, despite not having received proper training. The actress, who was seen as one of the judges in season 3 of India's Best Dancer, called it the irony of her career that she was completely untrained in the art form when she began her journey in the industry. Talking about the same, she said:
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“It is ironical. I am not a trained dancer. I am not a trained actor. I have never done theatre. So songs, shooting for a song was a nightmare for me. I went through sleepless nights. I would get acidity because of the stress I was going through. I was always scared of songs. Can you imagine my career is based on songs. Even if the movie has not done well, I have done well only because of the songs that I was featured in have done well. They have not all been dance numbers, My first song was ‘Sambhala Hai Maine…’ it was just walking, and it was just expression… It’s the songs that have carried me through.”
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In the same conversation, further talking about her tremendous anxiety of being unable to dance despite being part of many songs, Sonali recalled an incident with Saroj Khan. It was during the filming of English Babu Desi Mem with Shah Rukh Khan, when the ace dance guru, Saroj Khan got fed up of Sonali. So much so that Saroj was ready to kill her. However, Saroj's assistant, Ahmed Khan used to bribe Sonali with ice-creams and chocolates to make her do rehearsals until she perfectly aced the steps. She shared:
“I had done English Babu Desi Mem where Saroj Khan was ready to kill me because I couldn’t dance, and I was playing a bar dancer. Can you imagine what she was going through? I was struggling. Every hour I wasn’t working, I was trying to learn how to dance and Ahmed (Khan) was Saroj ji’s assistant at that time and I remember how he would bribe me with chocolates and ice-cream, he would pick me up from my home in Lokhandwala (Andheri, Mumbai), take me to a rehearsal hall and he would teach me. I was like. ‘I can’t do it, I am fed up,’ and he would say, ‘Come on, just one step, just once more. This is the chocolate, this is the ice cream’. He would literally bribe me, like a little child.”
Afterwards, Sonali walked down the memory lane and revealed how she was being asked to be a part of the song, Humma Humma, in Mani Ratnam’s iconic film, Bombay. Revealing that she still wonders about how she could bag the song, which went on to become one of the most popular dance numbers of the ’90s, Sonali admitted:
“It was not shot in Bombay, it was shot in Chennai. It was a Mani Ratnam film. Actually, I felt bad that I didn’t have the movie, just one song… There was an equal amount of people saying that I shouldn’t be doing it, or I should be doing it. And I said it’s ok, I get to learn something and that time the challenge in front of me was that I couldn’t dance. Till date I don’t know why I landed it, but I remember eventually taking it on. I remember I was supposed to dance with Prabhu Deva’s brother.” Sonali said that she took it on as a challenge, and surprised herself by how well it turned out."
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Earlier, during the screening of her film, Sarfarosh, co-starring Aamir Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Jaykar, and many others, Sonali Bendre admitted that she never watched her film until that time. The recent screening of the film was arranged after it marked 25 years. Thus, during the event, Sonali admitted that after watching the film, she felt like it was released just a few years back. However, she also recalled how, after being claustrophobic during the shoot of Sarfarosh, she had messed up the filming of a song.
What do you think about Sonali Bendre's revelations regarding her dance numbers? Let us know!
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