In Sach Kahun Toh: An Autobiography (Penguin Random House India), Neena Gupta provides a candid and affecting appraisal of her profession...
In Sach Kahun Toh: An Autobiography (Penguin Random House India), Neena Gupta provides a candid and affecting appraisal of her professional and personal journeys. The 62-year-old actor is honest without being self-pitying about her career choices. She describes herself as “flawed”, “chipped” and “broken”, a celebrity with low-self esteem who has frequently grappled with the consequences of her life choices.
Gupta’s most important role came her way when she was pushing 60, and after she had advertised herself on her Instagram account as a “good actor looking fr good parts to play”. In Amit Sharma’s Badhaai Ho (2018), Gupta played to acclaim a middle-aged housewife who gets pregnant. Several noteworthy roles followed Badhaai Ho, including in the films Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan and The Last Color and the web series Panchayat.
Apart from anecdotes about some of her key roles and bruising encounters with predatory producers and actors, Gupta writes about her parents and brother, the cricketer Vivian Richards, with whom she had Masaba Gupta, her failed first marriage, an engagement that went nowhere, various relationships, and her second marriage. Here are a few things we learnt about the National School of Drama-trained actor through her own words.
Mum and Dad
Neena Gupta’s mother, Shakuntala Gupta, was a school teacher with two master’s degrees in Sanskrit and political science. (Neena Gupta...
