Actress Sanjana Sanghi is IMDB’s Breakout Star of the Year for her role in Dil Bechara.
She also spoke about how a film of hers never made it on screen and that she discovered her life’s purpose all because of acting.
“A story that I haven’t really ever told is that I was in the 12th grade when I shot a full-fledged feature film, four months before my board exams. I went for two full months to shoot for this film, living in a guest house with half my suitcase filled with my books. I used to courier exam test papers and practice papers with my tutors and teachers back home in Delhi, because I was always on set. But what I was doing there was creating art for 12 hours and then trying to study with the little energy I had left for two to three hours. And today that film, it’s called Banana, which featured myself and Adarsh Gourav, who played the White Tiger in Priyanka Chopra’s production, never released, and it could have been the reason why I would have got the worst marks of my life and maybe never gotten into any college of repute,” Sanjana says.
She then continued, “But somehow I ended up doing well in the boards as well and, even though Banana never released, it was on that film that I realised that this is really what makes me feel alive – engaging in my passion for that art form is what made me realize what I want to do for the rest of my life. And its failure didn’t prevent me from not wanting to take it up. It’s when you fall and scrape your knee and it bleeds a little that you learn how to fix it, and get back up. And that can’t happen without play and the little risk that may come with it.”
Sanjana discussed how important it is to get away from TV and phone screens and games that make children passive observers and instead play in nature and invent their own stories. “I had this amazing opportunity to spend 10 days in a small Bhutanese village at one of the few schools in the world that focuses on education that’s equally split inside and outside the classroom. Those 10 days were one of the most powerful moments I’ve had in this very curious relationship that I’ve had on my journey to make students and kids the best versions of themselves.”
Sanjana is currently working on her upcoming film titled ‘Om: The Battle Within’. She will be seen opposite Aditya Roy Kapur in the action thriller.