Sameera Reddy says she was made three shades lighter, wore padded bras in debut film | Bollywood News

3 min readMumbaiJul 16, 2026 09:14 PM Earlier this year, Sameera Reddy was seen making her return to Hindi cinema after an absence of 14 years in Abhijeet Mohan Warang’s political drama Aakhri Sawal, also starring Sanjay Dutt. Reddy also shared screen space with Dutt 24 years ago in her debut film, Sohail Khan’s 2002 action romance Maine Dil Tujhko Diya. Now, the actor has revealed that she had to encounter bias against her skin colour back then.
“In my first film, Maine Dil Tujhko Diya, I was made two to three shades lighter. I almost looked gray! I used to full body makeup to match the colour of my face with my body,” confessed Reddy. “Do you know how many women have it in their own families? Her own parents and in-laws say, ‘You’re dark or fat.’ What the hell! Who has given the definition of beauty?,” she added.
Sameera Reddy further revealed that it’s taken her over two decades to come to terms with her insecurities, which weren’t limited to her skin colour. “The confusion with what I had to represent, what I’m selling, and who I am — I have to say it was only in my 40s that I broke it! It took me 20 years because for all these years, I was wearing only padded bras, bum pads, and coloured lenses,” the 47-year-old actor told Hauterrfly.
She added, “I was always ‘pleasantly plump’ since my childhood, as I’d like to put it. When I lost weight, I was told, ‘Your bum is flat.’ Today, I can laugh about it. I was struggling till my 30s with my identity that I’m not that fair, I don’t have light eyes, and I’m not too tall! I used to hunch and walk because my hero wasn’t tall. But now I’m like, ‘That’s not my problem, bro! You wear heels!’ At that time, it was such a problem. So, what do you do? You make the girl feel bad.”
Sameera Reddy recounted that even female assant directors would shame her for her body type. “Even the dress designers told me right from the start that I had to do something about it. So, all my outfits had built-in bras with pads. And I’ve to tell you I’ve the best collection of pads! I was told so many times, ‘How much can we try with the pads, Sameera? Just do something about it. What is it going to take, anyway?,” said the actor.

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Sameera Reddy is married to entrepreneur Akshai Varde, and they have a son and a daughter.