Fatima Sana Shaikh: Don’t understand why we look at being competitive negatively helobaba.com
Actor Fatima Sana Shaikh has had a good year with her projects such as Dhak Dhak and Sam Bahadur getting noticed, and she admits she is content and competitive at the same time. But the one thing which disturbs her is the negative connotation that the word competition comes with.
Talking about her projects, she says, “When I’m selecting a product, I go by my instincts. I see what is exciting me through the roles as a whole, from script to the director. When I’m prepping for a role, I dig deep into the script and take as much as I can from the text that I have. But the characters don’t stay with me. I am out of the character the moment I step out”.
When it comes to her career graph, she has portrayed diverse characters over all these years. “Such diverse roles help because you become empathetic and sensitive towards other people. People who are not from your world, or industry. You get empathy, sensitivity and acceptance,” she says.
Opening up about how she has stayed away from stereotypes, she reveals, “Times have changed where people are okay to see actors in different roles. Now, there is a higher acceptance level of actresses playing different kinds of roles. That is helping me not to myself. That is liberating. We live only once, abhi nahi toh kab karungi… I don’t want to be scared of exploring something just because I think I might not be accepted”.
Here, she admits that she doesn’t focus on what others are doing, but herself.
“When you spend enough time in the industry, you realise that having insecurities is normal. It’s part and parcel but you cannot let that stop you. And you cannot be like kissi aur ko neeche karke aage badenge, and think that is the way to go forward. That’s wrong,” Shaikh tells us.
The 31-year-old adds, “You should wish that everyone should do well, and you want to do better than that. I am competitive, but I also try to take things in a positive way. That’s how I approach life and career. Because if you are in that circle of comparing yourself with others then it is a never ending circle. There are always going to be issues and flaws”.
Sharing her views further, the actor shares, “Being competitive is good. You don’t have to damage other people to be competitive. You just have to be better from who you were yesterday…. Usually when we think of competition, there is so much negativity around it. That is not how it should be. And that’s now how I look at it”.
