Mumbai: Bollywood actor Dia Mirza is definitely one of the well-spoken actresses we have in film industry. Recently, Dia opened up on how the film industry is male dominated and its ‘unfortunate’ to see how younger actresses are cast opposite older actors but older actresses don’t get enough work.
In an interview with Times Of India, Dia Mirza gave an example of the actress Neena Gupta who is 61 years old. She said Neena Gupta had to write an Instagram post asking for work before making a comeback with ‘Badhaai Ho’.
Dia Mirza said that it is ‘bizarre’ to observe a middle-aged actor cast opposite a teenage counterpart. But this happens, she said, because the industry is male-dominated.
“The unfortunate truth of the matter is that stories are not written for the female older characters as much as the male ones. It is even more unfortunate to see an older man playing younger parts. The idea of beauty is always associated with youthfulness. I think that is why there is a large interest in consuming younger faces,” Dia told TOI.
She continued, “An aberration to this would be an actress like Neena Gupta ji. She literally has said it out loud more than once, ‘I am an actor. I love my job. Please cast me.’ Thankfully, some interesting filmmakers decided to cast her in lead parts that were defeating her age. But there are a lot of actresses in their middle age who are struggling and aren’t being cast because no stories are being written for them.”
Dia Mirza added, “The industry is male-dominated. Older men like to be cast opposite younger women to extend their own shelf life. It is bizarre that a 50 plus something actor is acting opposite a 19-year-old actress.”
Meanwhile, on the work front, Dia Mirza was last seen in Taapsee Pannu starrer Thappad in which she played a pivotal role. The movie was directed by Anubhav Sinha and minted decent numbers at box office.