In a candid interview, actress Nargis Fakhri revealed that the constant glare of the Bollywood limelight took a toll on her mental and physical health. The actor, who made her debut with Imtiaz Ali’s film ‘Rockstar’, acted in a handful of movies before she went on a hiatus to be with her parents in the USA.
Speaking in an interview recently, she said she became unwell and had gone through much mental and physical stress. “I had a lot of physical ailments that were interfering with my daily life. It was very difficult to ignore these problems. My body, in a way, was telling me that it’s not being able to handle it. I knew it in my mind that I had to take a break because I wasn’t the happiest person.”
Comparing the industry to a hamster wheel, she added that it felt like a rat race with “endless meetings and endorsements”. She said, “It never ends. The pressure and the mental stress that you go through is heavy even though that depends on the kind of films or characters you’re doing. You’ve to invest your soul when you’re acting. Actors need more than a few days of break to get in touch with themselves again.”
However, Nargis said she kept pushing through, even though her “mind felt disconnected” from her body. Finally, she decided to take a break even though the agency told her ‘out of sight, out of mind”. She said, “They told me not to do that and cautioned me that if I go out of sight, I would be out of people’s mind. I can’t deny their fears, there’s definitely some truth to that. But what was important was the answer to the question, ‘Why would someone choose to go out of sight and how much do they want to be out there anymore?”
On the work front, Nargis was last seen in ‘Torbaaz’ and has the Telugu film ‘Hai Hara Veera Mallu’ in the pipeline.
