Living another person's life exciting: Vidya Balan on acting

From a single mother to a sex symbol, Vidya Balan has portrayed a range of characters on the big screen and says acting allows you to live another person's world.

"I don't think it (acting) is about proving oneself. It is about inhibiting another person's world, one you have not been in before. I think as an actor, living a person's life is exciting," Vidya told IANS in an interview.

Vidya was recently seen as a plump loud Punjabi woman with an unusual dressing sense in Rajkumar Gupta directed "Ghanchakkar" and the actress says she always finds a way to connect with her characters, and managed to do with this one too.

"There is also a part of them, which I connect with. My character in 'Ghanchakkar' is not someone who I could identify with her initially, but the point of identification was that she was just happy with herself.

"I might not be happy with myself all the time, but I love people like that. You find that point of identification with the character," she said.

Although at the box office, "Ghanchakkar" couldn't do much, but the critics and audiences praised Vidya's performance.

She finds appreciation humbling.

"I feel humbled when people say that. I am just doing work, which I believe in," said the actress who played central roles in "Kahaani" and "The Dirty Picture", but was okay being second fiddle in "Ghanchakkar".

"In 'Ghanchakkar', Sanju (Emraan Hashmi) was the central character. I was not the protagonist. I was ok with it as I love the character. I don't have set notions and don't take on that kind of pressure. My only dream was to be an actor and I am living my dream to the fullest," she said.

Vidya is married to Siddharth Roy Kapur, managing director of Studios, Disney UTV, but unlike her husband, she does not want to enter production business.

"I don't want to start producing films. I am very greedy about being an actor and I always have a producer at home," she said.

What about creative satisfaction?

"After 'The Dirty Picture', I thought I had done everything that needed to be done. But I was even taken aback when Rajkumar Gupta came to me with 'Ghanchakkar'. I felt grateful to him that he could think of me in this diametrically opposite character. But he was also making a diametrically opposite film."

Now Vidya will be seen with Farhan Akhtar in "Shaadi Ke Side Effects".

(Anjuri Nayar can be contacted at anjuri.n@ians.in)