After facing the arc lights for half a century, veteran actress Sharmila Tagore says she has done enough and wants an extended break from movies even though she looks forward to the release of her Marathi venture Samaantar next month."I'm not interested in working any more, frankly. Unless it's something really exciting, I don't want to do films. I want to do other things," said Sharmila.
"I have been working since I was 16. In fact, I was 13 when I did my first film (Apur Sansar 1959) and then went back to school and came back to cinema. Since then, I've just been working. I've done enough. Now I'm happy doing other things and, for that matter, not doing anything. I'm any way quite lazy," said the 62-year-old thespian who looked cool and relaxed in a pair of jeans and a floral shirt at her residence.
"I love gardening. My garden is my passion. I don't have one here, but I have a huge one in Pataudi. I like growing things there. I also spend my time doing things for NGOs, I'm the goodwill ambassador for Unicef, etc," said Sharmila, who is married to former cricketer Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi and whose son is the actor Saif Ali Khan.
"We have houses in Pataudi and Bhopal; so I keep busy looking after them...If nothing else, taking care of the road outside. Basically, I don't want to work in usual roles any more. I want a definite break," said Sharmila, who was last seen in Morning Walk.
The actress might be wanting a break, but she is now in the midst of promoting her first ever Marathi venture Samaantar, produced by yesteryears actor Amol Palekar and distributed by Big Pictures. It is set to release September 4.
Sharmila plays a middle-aged recluse who comes across her old flame Keshav (Amol), a 60-year-old man who gets so embroiled in the humdrum of life that he has nothing to look forward to on his personal front.
"My character Shama looks like a wounded deer, but she is very creative, makes pottery, plays the violin, she is extremely engaged with life instead of running away from life," she explained.
She admits she was nervous when she took up the role in the film simply because she wasn't familiar with the language. "I was very nervous about the language. Marathi is a very rich language and I have read a lot of Marathi stories translated into Hindi or Bengali. Their literature is rich like Bengali and Malayalam. I was really nervous. But my friends in the Marathi industry like Mohan Agashe and Jabbar Patel assured me it was light.
"While working on the film, I didn't have any problems as I used to take the dialogues before. But then there were few dialogues for my role. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to do it. Because I don't believe you can pick up a language so fast," she said.
It is after 30 years that she has teamed up with Amol and says it was a pleasure working with him and that his style of filmmaking suits her temperament. The last time they shared screen space was for a Bengali film Mother.
After Samaantar, Sharmila has just one more movie titled Life Goes On - a bilingual movie by debut director Sangeeta Dutta. In this one too she features with veterans namely Girish Karnad and Om Puri.
"Then I will be on a total break," she said.
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