Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm interested in female friendships and family relationships. So I don't write the traditional romance, where you just have the hero and the heroine's love story. I like intertwining relationships.
'Emma' is my favorite Jane Austen novel - one of my favorite novels period; a novel about intelligence outsmarting itself, about a complicated, nuanced, irresistible heroine who does everything wrong.
I had lost my way for some time, so I need to do things that I am happy with. It's not about being the number one heroine or money. It's about doing roles that I enjoy. My biggest ambition is happiness.
For a woman who didn't want to be an actress, who is too tall, lanky, shy, and who didn't fit into a Hindi conventional heroine, I am overwhelmed that my audiences have accepted me in India and the world.
If I'm going to get overshadowed in a film, it's because of something that I haven't done, not because of what the other heroine has done or because I've focused on the amount of scenes she had in the film.
Everywhere in the society, even my extended family, when they got to know that I am going to be an actor, they were very worried because there is a lot of negativity attached to my craft or being a heroine.
What is important to me as an actor is that, even if I have to spread my arms, take my shirt off on a mountain top with my heroine in a chiffon sari, it still has to be me and my twist or my funny take on it.
I would have loved to do a film like 'Piku' or 'Neerja.' But I never got a role where a woman played an authoritative role. In my time, the hero and the villain were both men. The heroine was only the victim.
First you wonder if they're separate stories, but no, they're not, they're contingent stories and they form a pattern. And you begin with some of the island as the place to which the heroine of the book returns.
The paranormal bad boy is usually a fiercely loyal partner for the heroine. Once his sights are set on her, he doesn't notice other women, and he's utterly unconcerned with what anyone else thinks of his choice.
I don't start a film with the heroine but with the cinema subject. If there is a woman in the story, she has to be of a particular type. It's not as if I start with Madhuri Dixit and then think what kind of film.
Don't forget to let your reader feel the emotions of the scene. If you get all tied up with the mechanics of where the hero's hands are and not about how they make the heroine feel, then the scene will read flat.
A lot of what I was wanting to do in my work and what I have been doing has been about the unexpected... that unexpected situation of wanting to be the heroine and yet wanting to kill the heroine at the same time.
It's true that romance novels do detail the courtship phase of a relationship. We usually write 'And they lived happily ever after' before our heroine starts snoring or our hero starts tossing his socks over the hamper.
That first meeting - the one where the hero and heroine start the slow burn that takes the whole story to turn into true love - is the single most important part of the whole book. Nail it, and you've won yourself readers.
I loved 'Homeland' - it's such an intriguing, intelligent piece of television, and I am fascinated by them making a hero and heroine that are so odd, so flawed and so complicated. It is a programme that really draws you in.
I started as a child artist, and not as a heroine, as most would think. I was performing on stage once when the late Bimal Roy saw me and asked me if I would work in films. I was too tiny. Without realising, I just said yes.
For the most part, romance is written in third person, and it's written in multiple points of view, so you're in the hero's head, and you're in the heroine's head. I've always said that I'm more of a narrator than a creator.
Since most heroes are doing villainous roles these days, that thrill is lost. Earlier, there used to be a hero, a heroine, a villain and such. The villain's entry would generate a lot of curiosity among the audience back then.
I had begun my career with emotional films - Rajasthani film 'Bai Chali Sasariye.' Later I did several films as a heroine, and made the audience cry a lot. I even did action films, where I would play a dacoit or a police officer.
I've always felt that it didn't feel right for me when a protagonist goes through a storyline where they're killing a lot of enemies, and at the very end of the story he ends up kissing the heroine and that's where you end the game.
This industry is in a hurry to gain solid results. They expect a hero or a heroine to get intimate on the first day of meeting for the good of the film, which is against my temperament. I draw a line, which the industry doesn't like.
She doesn't do the things heroines are supposed to. Which is rather Jane Austen's point - Fanny is her subversive heroine. She is gentle and self-doubting and utterly feminine; and given the right circumstances, she would defy an army.
Some felt my looks would not go down with the Bengali audience. They felt I was not photogenic. Others felt I was just what Bengali cinema needed when there was lack of glamour for heroine roles and there were few leading ladies around.
How it works for me is that a scene comes to mind, usually a scene between the hero and heroine, that depicts the emotional conflict. From that scene, the characters come alive for me. I don't do a lot of preplanning in any way when I write.
The audience simply don't find a heroine picking a fight with 10 guys as convincing as a hero. So the industry always sticks to psychological thrillers and ghost movies for heroine-oriented projects and this can sustain only for a short time.
Okay, I am happy with the way I look, but I have never, never, ever thought of myself as a 'pretty girl.' Honestly. When I read some of these scripts I'm sent, and they describe the heroine as 'incredibly beautiful,' I wonder why they sent it to me.
The final cover for 'Heroes Are My Weakness' feels exactly right. It reflects the cold, wintry setting of an isolated island off the coast of Maine and the feisty spirit of a heroine who refuses to give up, even when the odds are stacked against her.
I think we worry way too much about where books should fit inside genres. In a romance, the hero and heroine are on a journey together, and no matter how awful it gets, by the end of the book they'll be in love, with the probability of a happy ending.
There is perhaps no more rewarding romance heroine than she who is not expected to find love. The archetype comes in many disguises - the wallflower, the spinster, the governess, the single mom - but always with one sad claim: Love is not in her cards.
'Captain Marvel,' whereby the steel trap is challenged, where the hero is a heroine, where the most powerful person who has the welfare of the future of the human race is a woman. What else can it be? Because that was the role of my mother when I was a kid.
I wanted to create a heroine that was flawed. I wanted her to be a real person. She's selfish, she's childish, she's immature and because I'm doing a three-book arc I really played that up in the first book. I wanted the reader to be annoyed with her at times.
I've always scribbled, and I still do it. I've written numerous scripts for films for which I think I'd be perfect as the complex, intelligent and, yes, modern heroine. Embarrassingly bad, all of them. I've had to come to terms with the fact that I'm not a writer.
I was thrilled to play a role on 'Dora the Explorer,' a show that has touched the lives of many children around the world, including my own child. Dora is such an iconic and important Latina heroine, and I'm proud to now be a part of the show's ever-growing legacy.
I have been fortunate to get different types of work, but by and large till 90s for actors like me there were not many opportunities besides playing brother of the heroine or friend of the hero or young college villain after the earlier new wave was consumed by television.
As her life became more unhappy, acting attracted Marie-Antoinette because it fulfilled unmet emotional needs. By all accounts, she was quite good in her little private theatricals. But her desire to be a heroine, both literally and figuratively, was shocking to the French.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus is just perfect in 'Veep.' She gets to show off the spiky claws beneath her patrician finesse. The obvious way to play 'Veep' would be to make Louis-Dreyfus a folksy heroine, one with more common sense or populist heart than her enemies. But she isn't one.
'Heroine' is about a declining and imbalanced superstar - a very brave and bold role. I wanted to test whether I could carry a role like this. I have given 200 per cent to this role. She's a very complex character, very aggressive, manipulative and bold, yet she's very fragile.
I'd always wanted to be an action heroine. That's a chick dream, getting to wear a leather bodysuit and be blonde and kick ass. But, what really attracted me to 'Dredd' was the script. It was fantastic! It was about people and characters, and not just about explosions and fighting.
Darcy, the heroine of 'Something Blue,' is quite shallow and opinionated. At one point, she commented that she dislikes 'gingers,' i.e., men with red hair. I received several emails from fiery redheads who said they were offended by 'my' comments. I had to remind them that it is fiction.
I've tried to be inclusive in my '2B' series. Over the course of three books, I wrote African-American characters, a paraplegic character, gay and lesbian characters, a bisexual, Jewish heroine, a multiracial hero, Korean and Chinese-American characters, and a multiracial supporting character.
Some people say heroines just have to look good and provide the glamour. Some say, from dance-n-song routines, heroines have come a long way. Today, the heroine's name adds weight to the film, though maybe they can't carry the whole film on their names. I believe, yes, we do contribute a lot to films.
Kim Kardashian's marriage to Kris Humphries famously lasted 72 days, and was reported in the tabloids as being all about the big bucks paid by magazines for the bridal photos: it is a spectacle of a bride-to-be as entrepreneur, not as romantic heroine; the groom, in this scenario, is nothing but a prop.
I was amazed to realize that for many Westerners, Scheherezade was considered a lovely but simple-minded entertainer, someone who relates innocuous tales and dresses fabulously. In our part of the world, Scheherezade is perceived as a courageous heroine and is one of our rare female mythological figures.
I've found in the past that the more closely I identify with the heroine, the less completely she emerges as a person. So from the first novel I've been learning techniques to distance myself from the characters so that they are not me and I don't try to protect them in ways that aren't good for the story.
I feel that, historically, the Art Deco period has the most resonance for me. As a person, it has to be the plucky Clara Bow, the heroine of American silent movies of the 1920s. She embodied feminine dressing mixed with men's style. All this then evolved into the exquisite style and simplicity of Coco Chanel.
I am 100-films old. In my heyday, I have done a lot of commercial films, including dancing around the trees with the heroine. But after working with Rituparno Ghosh, my understanding of cinema changed. Whatever good I am doing, it is because of him. If I am being called a good actor, it is only because of him.
I don't want to be typecast as a heroine who does a certain kind of cinema, which is why I experiment with the types of films that I do. But yes, I won't deny that romantic love stories or romantic comedies are what I enjoy doing the most, because as an audience those are the kind of films that I like watching.
As I had visualized, 'Heroine' is shaping up to be a very contemporary film with a different premise and strata. This film, like most of my other films, is a blend of facts and fiction. The film has a larger span, more characters, and costumes... a journey that revolves around an actress's life and the showbiz.
I started my career with her. I was supposed to do my first film in Tamil in which she was the other heroine. The film was titled 'Vennira Aadai.' It was a love triangle, with Jayalalithaaji and I playing the hero's two love interests. But the director Sridhar removed me from the film after a few days' shooting.