‘Dad convinced me I could become an actor’, says Shama Sikander

I am currently doing a film called Bypass Road which will release on November 1. I am also doing another film called Tipsy which will start this year. There are a couple of web shows in the pipeline, but I haven’t really finalised on any particular one but you will hear about it soon. They are some very interesting shows.

I really can’t say much about both since we will have a proper session whenever the time comes. Both are very different from one another. My roles are completely different and I am really excited to be a part of both the films

I used to love watching Sridevi on screen. I loved watching Mumtaz. I never thought that I could be an actor. People around me perhaps would have thought but I never thought that I could be an actor. I could do all of that because people don’t have big dreams in the town where I come from. It’s a small town where people live very normal middle-class life and there is not much available there. My father brought us all to Mumbai and he told me that I could be an actress. I thought he was kidding at first. I told him that I was not beautiful and ‘just look at these girls, they are so pretty’.

Then he responded by asking why I thought I wasn’t pretty. He told me never to say that to myself and that I could do anything I wanted. So yeah, here I am today doing something that nobody has been able to do in my hometown and I feel proud and grateful to people who helped me and helped me reach where I am today.

If you had asked this earlier, I would say I knew only acting but now I have discovered in me a lot of other talents which I can pursue as a career. For example, I can be an interior designer or a director or a producer, a creative head. Anything related to the field of art, I can definitely do a very good job. I have a very creative mind, great sense of colour and aesthetics. I am pretty good at interiors. I have done a couple of homes of my own and my friends. So yeah, I think I can be pretty good at that. I can be a social worker too.

My father chose this field for me. After going through depression, there was a time when I had the choice to do what I really wanted to do. That was the time when I gave a deep thought about how much I loved acting and how much I missed it because I did stop acting for years. I missed being an actor. I felt deep in my heart that I wanted to become an actor because it came so naturally to me. It’s just a part of me and I don’t feel that I am stressing myself when I am acting. When I am performing, I am just being totally in it. It’s like meditation for me and when you listen to people cheering for you, clapping for you, when you can transport them to a different world through your performance, there is no other high that can rival that