Waif to Warrior—Kangana Ranaut

Abstract

There are outsiders and then there are outsiders in Bollywood. It is difficult for an actress to break into an industry dominated by star dynasties unlike legendary male stars, almost impossible when the actress comes from a small town in remote Himachal Pradesh. Kangana Ranaut infiltrated an incestuous world minus credentials of a modelling career, television stint or a powerful godfather. I propose to chart Ranaut’s career through a new Bollywood sensibility that incorporates society’s shifting attitudes to women and their aspirations. Kangana Ranaut is an exceptional myth-buster because she is not a conformist in attitude and appearance. There is both disdain and confidence in not courting powerbrokers and the camps that carve out niches for themselves and their protégés. As for appearance, she has a deceptively waif-like fragility that made her standout in early films—Gangster’s isolated victim of revenge and the self-destructive vulnerability of an actress on the verge of a breakdown in Woh Lamhe. Kangana reinvented screen sexiness along the way as she mastered English and a distinct fashionista avatar, neither succumbing to the ideal of native voluptuousness nor assembly line Western glamour. Her first National Award for best supporting actress (in Fashion) was for the honest-to-chiselled-collarbone super model insecure in her temporary perch on the fashion ladder. The journey from vulnerability to strength speaks of her ability to choose the right challenging script and mould her evolving personality to portray roles that reflect India’s changing social reality in Tanu Weds Manu and Queen. She is now the first choice of commercially successful auteurs (Vishal Bharadwaj and Vikas Bahl) who make distinctly personal films using traditional narrative tropes.