Mithun Chakraborty remembers the time when he was the hottest star: ‘I was a very lonely man’
Mithun Chakraborty has his hands full with multiple projects in his kitty. The actor, who recently featured in Amazon Prime Video’s original series Bestseller, is seen as one of the judges on Colors TV’s Hunarbaaz. He also has The Kashmir Files, a Vivek Agnihotri directorial, set for a theatrical release on March 11 this year. But this time is nothing as compared to the period when Mithun Da, as he is fondly called, rose to fame as Disco Dancer and ruled 80s and 90s with innumerable projects.
However, remembering the time when he was “the hottest selling star of the country,” the veteran actor told PTI, “When I did become the number one star of the country, I found that it was… Oh my God, an extremely lonely place. It is really, very, very lonely. You are all alone there.”
“They would say ‘Stay away from dada, he has become too big’. My friends would also be scared of me. It was a very weird atmosphere. I would wake up, go to shoot, come back and be lonely, while being the biggest star, the hottest selling star of the country. Main ek bohot akela aadmi ho gaya tha (I had become a very lonely man). But this is part of life too,” he added.
Talking about surviving in the industry for so many decades, Mithun said the key is to keep honing skills and moving with the times. He emphasised that having talent and being a good human go hand-in-hand and are crucial for survival in the film industry. “There is no survival without talent. Only your talent can take you ahead,” he said, adding, “Your superstardom will vanish in a heartbeat if you are not a good person. Karma will just wait for the right time, no one can escape that.”
Bestseller, which also starred Shruti Haasan, Gauahar Khan and Arjan Bajwa, marked Mithun’s debut in the OTT space. Talking about the same, he said, “I want to go with the time, not swim against the tide. If I think I’m still a Disco Dancer, I’ll be foolish. So I have to think what kind of roles will suit me now, and the one I can do effortlessly. If OTT is the current time, then I’ll have to mould myself like that.”
With inputs from PTI
