New Delhi:
Very few actors can walk away from fame at the peak of their career, and Pooja Bedi is one of them. She began modelling in her early teens and debuted with the 1991 film Vishkany. She was labelled a ‘sex symbol’ at the time, but just four years into the profession she gave it all up for marriage.
What’s Happening
- Speaking to Suhasini Maniratnam on Jos Alukkas’s YouTube channel, Pooja Bedi said, “My mother always taught me that whatever you do, you give it your 100 per cent or you don’t do it at all. Whatever you do, be in the pursuit of excellence. I was in films and I wasn’t a very good actress, to be honest. I was very good at being sexy. I was 100 per cent good at being sexy. I used to be voted the sex symbol of India.”
- The actress was candid in admitting that she believed her acting skills were not up to the mark, but she was never motivated to be the ‘best actor’.
- She continued, “So I used to distract people by showing my cleavage so nobody would look up because they were too busy looking down.”
On Her Divorce
“Marriage is an experience; it’s a journey. I thank him for my two beautiful children. I don’t know how life would have been without them. I love them. My marriage gave me a best friend because my ex-husband, till today, is my best friend, and my children, they are my love, my life,” she said. She admitted that she made many “mistakes” in marriage, but getting married was not one of them.
Breaking convention, Pooja decided to separate when her daughter was five years old and her son was two.
“I am thankful and grateful for the 12 years we had together, the children that we had together. Thank you, but just because I had 12 good years doesn’t mean I should have 50 bad years. I was so happy to be married and I was so happy to be divorced,” she said.
Pooja Bedi married Farhan Furniturewala in 1994. The couple welcomed their daughter, actor Alaya F, in 1997, followed by their son, Omar. The two divorced in 2003 after nearly a decade of marriage.
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