Madhuri Dixit on the cost of fame that comes with being a superstar: ‘When paparazzi comes following us’

There are a few actors who become synonymous with the film industry itself, and Madhuri Dixit is one of them. There is an entire generation of women who grew up wanting to be Madhuri, with the aspiration even reflecting in the title of a movie. The actor broke more than a few hearts when she left Bollywood and her return to the industry in Aaja Nachle (2007) was justly celebrated. Now, the Dhak Dhak girl is making her digital debut with Netflix’s The Fame Game where she plays a superstar with a flawless facade.
In this interview with indianexpress.com, the actor talks about the price stardom extracts and how she has managed to not let it affect her family. She also talks about how challenging it is to maintain success and how she takes failure in her stride.
Excerpts:
Did real-life situations help you in portraying your character in The Fame Game?
My character Anamika Anand is a big star and is very famous. She has a perfect life and family. When we talk about the star and her family, her family dynamics and relationships are very different than mine. With her kids, she is like a tigress, she’ll do anything for them. And if they suffer even a bit because of her fame, she feels very bad about it.
In this series we have looked at the other side of fame, and we are showing how it can be dangerous.

As an actor when you get to play flawed characters, how liberating does that feel?
Perfection is an illusion. Nobody is perfect, everybody has some flaw. Anamika didn’t want to be in this profession, she was forced to be an actress. She feels claustrophobic and at one point, even wants to do something for her personal self as all her life she has been doing this for others.
People make makes. I sometimes… I don’t look good every day, sometimes I may look bad or my hair is messed up, or sometimes I am not feeling very good. That’s the reality, and I enjoy portraying these characters because there are so many layers. At one point she is saying, ‘My life is so good, I’m feeling so good’, ‘I feel so blessed’, but does she mean all those things she’s saying. Not only Anamika Khanna’s but all the characters in the series have a lot of layers, and every character has an arc of their own, and when that arc is complete, all the characters connect and it is just beautiful.

There is a line in the trailer where the investigating officer says, ‘she plays a new role every day, how can she remember her true self’? You have been that actor, that superstar, how have you managed to maintain your sanity?
I look at it as a profession. When I go in front of the camera, I am a professional actress, I know what I am doing. I have read the script, and I am playing that character, I become that character for the camera. But once I am back home I am a normal person, because that’s the way I’ve been brought up. Even when I was working in films, at the height of my career, my mom used to scold me to keep my room clean. I’d tell her that I’ve people to clean it for me, but she would say, ‘no, it is your mess, you got to clean it up yourself’. That’s how I am, once I am out of the studio and back home, I am myself, neither the actor, nor the star that people see one screen.
Once I am home, I am my kids’ mother and my husband’s wife, it is a completely different life. I never lost myself in trying to be the star that I was on screen.

In the series, as you said, that your character is very protective of her children, and doesn’t want her fame to affect them. Have your children ever had a bad experience because of your stardom?
Fortunately, I have not gone through something out of the world, or something so big that it would affect my family.
What happens are very minor irritations, when paparazzi comes following us. If you come out of a restaurant, there are so many photographers, and not every kid likes to be photographed. That would be the greatest issue for us, but that’s too small to get bothered about. I give my kids that freedom, and tell them that if they want to be photographed, it’s fine; if they don’t want to be photographed, that’s fine too. So there have been times when I have asked them to go and sit in the car first and then I follow. That’s how we manage and they’ve learnt to deal with it, as they are old enough now. When they were little, it was a bit confusing for them, but now they’re fine.

The show is mostly about the cost of fame. What has been the biggest price you’ve paid for being famous?
and large my life has been quite good, and never really had to pay a big price for my fame, because that’s the way I’ve treated it. For me, fame is just the product of what I do. Every morning I am excited that I am going to face the camera, that I am going to play a certain character and do this scene or that. That’s what excites me. Every thing else that happens to me is in peripheral vision. My focus is my art, whether I am dancing, singing or acting. My focus is my family when I am at home, everything to do with the kids. I need to know what they’re doing, where they are… For me, I’ve managed to keep these two lives very separate.
I don’t think fame has affected me in any negative way, yet.
How challenging has it been to maintain your success and how do you deal with failure?
As an actor, you have to reinvent yourself and think out of the box. You have to think what will appeal to people, and what different things I can do next, and all this not only to make yourself famous, but because you want to grow as an arte, as a person. I have never looked back, I always look forward to what I want to do next.

There are times when people have told me doing a certain things won’t suit me because ‘I am a big star’, like doing reels, etc. But how does that matter? You should do what you want to do. I enjoy what I do, so I keep doing it, that too quite passionately.
I always say that stardom shouldn’t define you, you should define your stardom. I am a very different person. I don’t like being stuck in a mould, just because I am a star. It doesn’t mean anything to me. For me what is more important is my kids, my family, my own happiness.