Rumours are rife that superstar Rajinikanth has signed Vidya Balan to do be his second heroine in daughter Soundarya Rajinikanth produced KS Ravikumar directed Raana.

In the film the superstar is doing triple role.

There have been a lot of speculations in the media as far as the female casting of Rajinikanth’s Raana is concerned.

While Deepika Padukone has been confirmed as one of the heroines there were rumours that Asin, Madhuri Dixit and Rekha were also offered to be a part of the film.

Vidya Balan met Rajinikanth at NDTV’s ‘Indian of the year award’ in New Delhi. She was literally gushing over him.

It was shown on NDTV how Vidya called out to her mom who was sitting among the audiences to come on stage to meet the superstar.

From there it was easy for the producers of Raana to rope in Vidya Balan

It is more or less confirmed that Vidya Balan will play the love interest of the middle-aged Rajni, while Deepika will be paired with the youth Rajini.

Now only father Rajini has to find a heroine!

When acting along with Rajini is a dream of all happening actresses in the country today, Asin had rejected an offer to play opposite Rajini in ‘Raana’.

In ‘Raana’ Rajini play triple roles and appears in there get ups of different generations. While the older warrior Rajini will have Rekha, the youthful Rajini will have Deepika opposite the super star.

To co-star opposite the middle aged Rajini, Asin was approached and she is said to have rejected the offer. Sources say the creative team of ‘Raana’ wanted a girl with a distinctly Indian look and who would click with the South audience well.

After Asin refused the role, no time was wasted in trying to convince her. The team went ahead and signed Vidya Balan.

Sources say the characters of the first two Rajni are full fledged while the third youthful Rajini will be a special cameo.

Talented Bollywood actor Vidya Balan will play one of the three female leads opposite Rajinikanth in Rana.

Southern superstar Ranjinikanth will play a triple role in Rana, which will be directed by KS Ravi Kumar. Rekha and Deepika Padukone were confirmed earlier and now Vidya

“The makers wanted a girl with a distinctly Indian look and who would click with the South audience well. Rajni has a triple role in Rana. Two are full-fledged parts while the third is a cameo. Rekha will co-star opposite the older Rajnikanth, Vidya with the middle-aged one and Deepika opposite the youngest,” a source told Mid Day.

After casting Aishwarya Rai Bachchan in Robot, he has roped in three more Bollywood heroines for Rana. Seems the southern actor can’t have enough of B-town beauties.

The movie will hit the floors in April. Get ready for Rajni’s triple avataar.

Vidya Balan is very fond of Rekha. The actress loves to dress and look like the beautiful Rekha. The fact that both actresses hail from South, bonds them more than anything else.

It is believed that after a recent movie award function, Rekha expressed her wish to watch Vidya’s much talked about film No One Killed Jessica. And could Vidya deny? The actress instantly decided to hold a special screening for Bollywood’s greatest diva and few close friends.

Rekha was super impressed and moved by the way Vidya portrayed the role of Sabrina Lall. She couldn’t stop herself and cried while watching the film. Rekha said that Vidya was fantastic in her character and also started addressing her as Sabrina. Rekha gave her blessings and hugged Vidya after watching the film.

How touching!

Vidya Balan has said that she is not fazed by comments about her looks, nor worried about ageing.

The 33-year old actress admitted that there was pressure on women to look young forever but said it was something that did not concern her.

“I don’t think about ageing at all. I have lived a very happy life so far and I look forward to it. It may bother me if I am 50 but it is a long way [off],” Balan told PTI.

“I think women get better with age,” she added. “Look at Rekha and my mother, they are getting better with age, be it beauty, brains or sensuality.”

Referring to the criticism that she once received about her style, the actress said that it was something to which she no longer paid any attention.

“I take comments on my looks in my stride. There could be days when you are badly turned out or have a bad hair day but I don’t care about it anymore,” she added.

Vidya Balan is on a high after the success of her movies, Ishqiya and Paa. But what’s making her truly happy is that she finally seems to have pleased the fashion fraternity.

The poor actress had been the butt of many jokes as she committed one style blunder after the other. Later, she found comfort in ethnic anarkalis.

But it was her saris which finally got her the thumbs up of style gurus.

This has got her the tag of trying to be like Rekha.

When she accepted her best actress trophy for Paa at a recent awards function from Rekha, the two looked very similar with their long hair and kanjeevaram sari.

Well, we’re sure she’d rather be compared to Rekha than be hammered for her style disasters.

Bollywood stars Amitabh Bachchan and Vidya Balan were cited as best actor and best actress respectively at the star-studded 55th Filmfare Awards ceremony here late Saturday.
Bachchan won the award for his role in Paa, while Vidya Balan claimed the trophy for her role in the same movie. As Bachchan was not present in the ceremony, Vidya Balan took the award on his behalf.
Hosting the gala night were Bollywood actors Shah Rukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan, whose one liners had the audience in splits. Their on-stage chemistry was much appreciated by the Bollywood stars present at the ceremony at the Yash Raj Studios.
3 Idiots was declared the best film, while Rajkumar Hirani claimed the best director award for the movie. A.R. Rahman won the best music director for Delhi 6.
Mohit Chauhan won the award for the best male playback singer for the song “masakali” from the movie “Delhi 6″, while the female playback singer honours were shared by Kavita Seth and Rekha Bhardwaj.
While Kavita was awarded for the song “Ik tara” from the movie “Wake Up Sid”, Rekha won the trophy for the song “Genda phool” from the movie “Delhi 6″.
Among the other highlights of the evening was a tribute to legendary pop singer Michael Jackson by Bollywood actor Shahid Kapoor, who charmed the audience with his perfect dance moves.

Two back-to-back critical and commercial successes and Vidya Balan is literally spoilt with all the appreciation coming her way. While some have marvelled at her effortless reinvention, others have insisted that she has carved a space for herself after busting the myth of power and beauty being strange bed-fellows in recent Hindi cinema. Vidya is slowly inching towards a zone that was earlier reserved for an actor like Rekha!

Ask Vidya about the changing image of Indian heroines and the actress says, “There was a time when Hindi films had heroines like Madhubala, Nargis, Hema Malini, Jaya Bachchan and Rekha, who epitomised beauty and strength. Our cinema then had men and women. In the mid ’80s, youth became the selling point even as we began to ape the American culture mindlessly. So, it was all about cinema of boys and girls. And even if boys graduated into men, girls remained static. The mindless obsession with youth made us lose sight of heroines abroad, who were more than mere glam dolls.”

But today, filmmakers claim that Vidya’s choice of breaking away from the usual, has given wings to their imagination. So, is Vidya trying to be the Rekha of new-age Indian cinema? “I am not trying to ape Rekha,” she says at the mention of how, at a recent award ceremony, she had dressed up like the diva. “Each one of us is unique. I admire Rekha a lot. She epitomises the quintessential Indian woman who is vulnerable, desirable, strong, sensuous and so much more. Beyond the obvious South Indian connection of the kanjeevaram and open hair, to be likened to someone like her, who epitomises the quintessential Indian woman, is humbling.”

And has Vidya found someone special? “I’m single and happy, but ready to be in a relationship. I’m a self-assured person and I’d want someone who is that way. Irrespective of which profession he comes from, I want him to respect others. That’ll happen if he respects himself,” she adds. And what about her personal take on multiple partners considering that her character in Ishqiya romanced two men? “Men are great at compartmentalising relationships. A woman can simultaneously have feelings for two men, but she can’t be sexually intimate with both. Polygamy exists, but I don’t think polyandry does.”

Meanwhile, offers to explore different mature shades of relationships have come her way. “Filmmaker Sujoy Ghosh had offered me a Bengali film, Premer Golpo that would have both Hindi and Bengali film actors. But I don’t know what’s happening to it. I’m keen on doing another classic with Dada (Pradeep Sarkar).” And, of course, there’s Rituparno Ghosh on the list too.

Meanwhile, she is headed to Delhi today to shoot for Rajkumar Gupta’s film. Though tight-lipped about the film, Vidya is all praise for co-star Rani Mukerji. “She is a fabulous actor and one of my favourites among my immediate seniors. This film is based on an incident that we are all aware of. But, we are not filming it like a docu-feature.”

She is the thinking man’s dream. Whether she plays the unwed mother, or locks lips with her co-star, or suggestively sucks a thumb, her dignity remains intact. And then a pretty face and a voluptuous figure do not hurt. Vidya Balan is on a roll.

With two back to back hits — Paa and Ishqiya — a lot of compliments are coming her way from the fraternity as well as the audience. “It feels good as I can sense a certain vindication in my father’s eyes. When I was being written about in not so polite terms, there were times when I lost heart and he would tell me ‘things will change’. ‘No one can take your performance away from you and no one can give you a performance. So if that is yours, just hold on to it and that will take you places’. These words of my family gave me strength when I was a little shaky,” says Vidya.

Learning from her past mistakes, Vidya has most certainly decided to stay away from candy floss cinema. Hailed as the next big thing when she made her debut in Pradeep Sarkar’s Parineeta followed by the cult Munnabhai MBBS, suddenly she was courting controversies for her career decisions and unflattering wardrobe. “Most definitely, I tried to be like other girls. There was a certain complacency setting in. My biggest dream of being in the movies had been achieved. Suddenly, I started getting influenced by even stray people who were telling me, ‘Oh, you are getting so boring now. C’mon, glam it up’. I was probably feeling apologetic about doing a Parineeta… and I am extremely ashamed of saying that. I had begun to sway and was suddenly looking at roles very superficially in terms of being western or Indian, which I had not done even for my first film. People could sense that I was losing my identity. But these experiences brought clarity. I have come out of it,” explains Vidya, who has now redefined ‘sexy’.

“Sexy is an attitude and it comes from self-assurance. Today, I have actually gone back to wearing my sari and people are now calling me sexy and raunchy. That gives me a high,” she smiles. “Once, Balki (director of Paa) told me, ‘It takes actors ages to find their niche. Look at you, you have it and you are just about to give it up. Thank God, you held it back in time’. I was fighting that for some reason,” adds Vidya. “The kiss in Ishqiya was so passionate, though I was covered from top to toe. Tomorrow, if I have to play a prostitute and wear skimpy clothes, I will do it,” she adds.

‘I want to retain my curves’

So recently, when she went for a fitness training programme to shed those extra kilos, she decided to get rid of the excess, not the essentials. “I told my trainer to retain the curves. We are blessed with beautiful bodies, why fight that, it makes us look so sensuous,” she says. On clear terms, Vidya states that she will never compromise on the role front, it’s “only substantial roles for me. I am extremely particular not to do films for the wrong reasons.” A thriller based on the Jessica Lall killing (where she shares screen space with Rani Mukerji), and a comic caper currently excites her. “I could do a mad comedy as long as my role is substantial. But don’t make it floozy. A lot of women’s roles in Hindi cinema are very apologetic, but I am glad to be representing the changing face of Indian women since I have always portrayed strong female characters,” asserts Vidya, who doesn’t want to draw any comparisons with the current crop of heroines. “I am being me, I don’t know better, I don’t know worse,” she merely says.

No wonder, the actor is deeply influenced by the likes of Waheeda Rehman, Hema Malini, Rekha, Sridevi and Madhuri Dixit. Incidentally, the star of the millennium, Amitabh Bachchan has compared Vidya to Waheeda. A lot of people, she says, also liken her to Meena Kumari, Madhubala, “and post-Ishqiya it is Smita Patil.” “Like these actresses, I would like to lead life on my own terms and be remembered forever. But I am not so sure how many from today’s brigade will be remembered for so long,” she can’t resist adding.

‘I’m in a space of my own’

But the numbers game in Bollywood is inevitable. With constant comparisons between a Kareena and Katrina, Priyanka and a Deepika and with their names taken in the same breath, does Vidya miss out being in the Aleague? “I definitely don’t have a grouse. With no measure of immodesty, I would like to say that I am in a space of my own. I gave one hit after the other, which continues. I got critical acclaim as well as commercial success. By that measure, I qualify to be number one,” she states.
And with this, we leave the sensitive and subtle performer to bask in her glory. She is back in form. “Earlier, with Parineeta and Munnabhai, stardom hit me literally. I had no time to sit, soak it in and think. Today, I am much calmer about the success coming my way. But that childlike excitement is very much there,” she chirps.

Close to a decade and a half after his last directorial effort HU TU TU (Tabu, Nana Patekar, Suneil Shetty), there are talks that acclaimed film maker Gulzar would be returning to wielding the megaphone once again for a film with Vidya Balan being the central protagonist. With decades of experience behind him and some author backed characters that he has lent to veteran actors like Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri and Rekha in the past, Gulzar has seemingly set his eyes on Vidya Balan who is pretty much in the same league as far as an actor with a substance is concerned.

Vidya is (obviously) guarded in her tone though while commenting, “At the moment I would only commit to doing the Jessica Lal film. Inshallah, I do hope though that Gulzar saab makes the film with me sooner than later. That will be THE moment for me in 2010 after a beautiful 2009. Beyond that I don’t wish to comment any further on the film.”