Bollywood’s beloved ‘Aditi’, Genelia Deshmukh, made her much-awaited comeback to the silver screen with Sitaare Zameen Par, after a prolonged hiatus from acting. The actress instilled herself in the minds of fans in the early 2000s with ‘Aditi Mahant’, a free-spirited and unapologetically authentic college girl, in Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na. Despite all the love she has received all these years for her work, she was once considered not conventionally pretty.
Genelia Deshmukh recalls not being considered the typical pretty girl in Bollywood
In a candid conversation with Nayandeep Rakshit, Genelia Deshmukh opened up about her initial years in Bollywood when her features allegedly didn’t match the typical standards of beauty, as the industry viewed it in the early 2000s. The actress recalled being labelled ‘not conventionally pretty’ as she didn’t have white skin, coloured hair or light eyes that the industry was obsessed with. Genelia shared:
“When I was growing up, actually very close to Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na also, there were a couple of people who told me, ‘You’re not the conventional pretty, pretty girl.’ I said, ‘What does that mean?’ When I was debuting, it was all about having only white skin, or, you know, having lighter eyes, and having coloured hair for some weird reason. Everyone went through putting contact lenses.”