10 Years of The Dirty Picture: When Vidya Balan spoke about Silk Smitha’s firebrand personality- “You like sex, I am sex, take it or leave it”

Milan Luthria's directorial The Dirty Picture which stars Vidya Balan, Naseeruddin Shah, Emraan Hashmi, and Tusshar Kapoor completed 10 years on December 2. The film which was inspired by the life of South actress Silk Smitha was well received and was noted for its dialogues, music, and Vidya Balan's performance.

Back in the day, ahead of the release of the film, Vidya Balan had spoken to Bollywood Hungama about playing Silk Smitha on screen. "I just had a blast doing this character, it is so over the top, it's in your face sexuality. But what's most interesting to me about Silk is that she is far beyond the body. The boldness of what you see in the promo, is about the body, about the clothes, the way she displays herself. She wears her sexuality on her sleeves. But I really think the film is far beyond that. It is about the person, it is about her attitude which you see in the dialogues, the choices she makes in the film. So I think that's what makes her an interesting person for me."

“Everyone was talking about, 'oh! For you, it must have been a lot to wear those clothes'. That's just one aspect of it. She is such a firebrand. She is way ahead of her time; at a time, when this could have been seen as exploitation. Yes, the way people shot her and things like that, it was very exploitative in a certain sense. But at the same time, I think the character in our film is someone who celebrated that, who said 'I have the body', it’s almost like saying, ‘You like sex, I am sex, take it or leave it’,” she added.

ALSO READ: 10 Years of The Dirty Picture EXCLUSIVE: “We had approached Kangana Ranaut initially. But she felt that she didn’t want to do the film at that point” – Rajat Arora