If reinvention had a patron saint, it would probably look suspiciously like Jaya Bhattacharya. The kind of actor who can turn a single lifted eyebrow into a character, a single line into a moment and single “no” into a role that inevitably boomerangs back to her. Nothing in her story follows the heroic-aspirant arc; she didn’t arrive in Mumbai chasing the spotlight. “I came because work brought me here,” she puts it simply. “And I stayed because I kept getting work. People had an eye and they believed in me before I believed in myself.”
The real shift in her life happened years earlier, in a hospital, not at a film set. “I grew up the day my father almost lost his life,” she recalls. “That’s when responsibility came in — not just to support myself but to support him,” Jaya shares as she looks back upon her start.
People believed in me before I believed in myselfJaya Bhattacharya
From there, the path was anything but linear. She laughs at her own misfires with disarming joy. As she talks about her role in Gustaakh Ishq as Khadija, a radio jockey, Jaya looks back upon her own rejection, early in her career. “I passed All India Radio’s audition and failed Doordarshan’s,” she says. Gustaakh Ishq wasn’t a straight forward landing either but when the role found its way to her, she approached Khadija with that distinctive stillness she’s known for — the kind that holds the scene without the announcement.
“I always ask the director what they don’t want from the character. What they want is already mentioned in the script,” Jaya mentions when she talks about how she approaches a character.
Delhi Crime followed a similar pattern: “I failed that audition too,” she grins. “But once Rishi Mehta saw me, he said, ‘This is my Vimla’.” When it comes to improvisation, one of her most iconic one was the eyebrows arched — the expression that later became a signature on-screen flourish with her role as Payal in Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi.
Theatre, though, is where she becomes almost porous. As Zeenat aapa in the recent Broadway-style musical theatre, Kaneez, she kept peeling back emotional layers of the dialogues because people could take out different meanings according to their own experiences. “Theatre is very different. You have to prepare to the point where no matter what the live audience is doing, whether they are listening to you or not, you are not perturbed.” Jaya mentions that you have to become the character, otherwise there won’t be any affect.
I always ask the director what they don’t want from the characterJaya Bhattacharya
Off screen, her fiercest performance is her NGO. “I take care of 40-50 animals. Most funds come from me,” Jaya admits. It explains her relentless pace — Tere Ishk Mein and Gustaakh Ishq have just released; Daldal arrives soon; and she’s already working on what’s next. Reinvention, for her, isn’t an act. It’s instinct.
Gustaakh Ishq is in theatres.
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