Amrita Singh, and her unconventional career choices: How the leading lady transformed into the anti-hero you love to hate

Amrita has donned roles of varying shades and colours—ironically mostly mothers in her later career—but unlike other Bollywood mothers who got shamefully and unfortunately slotted into one category, Amrita brought a new flavour with each maternal role. She was never the saree-clutching and tearful type; she revels in characters filled with greys—sometimes, the anti-hero who you just love to despise. In 1993, she was Ayesha Jhulka and Divya Bharti’s mother in Rang—and a fact to be noted here, she was still quite young when she took on this role. Yet, she delved freely into the different sides of her character—a tough businesswoman, an obedient daughter and a loving mother. The maternal roles came in full swing to her—she played Bobby Deol’s mother in the Bhagat Singh biopic 23rd March 1931: Shaheed.

However, one of Amrita Singh’s most underrated roles was in Kalyug, where she was the mastermind behind an entire porn industry. Simi Roy is a cruel, ruthless mercenary, who has no time to see the deteriorating mental health of her daughter—-she’s too busy destroying other people’s lives to realise that her life is slowly being engulfed in flames. It was an unusual film for starters with its own hitches and flaws and even more so, an unusual choice for a female actor to take up at the time. But Amrita didn’t hold back, she sank her teeth into the villainous and tortured role of a broken mother, having an affair with a younger man.

Amrita Singh through the rigid Bollywoodisation of maternal figures. She didn’t restrict herself to just films either, she also starred in the television show, KaavyaAnjali, as another venomous and sly mother, Nitya Nanda—who doesn’t appear so at first. But her repertoire of anti-heroine mothers doesn’t end there, she starred in 2 States, a faithful adaption of Chetan Bhagat’s book, where she played a Punjabi mother, unwilling to accept that her son (Arjun Kapoor) has fallen in love with a Tamilian woman (Alia Bhatt). She wasn’t outwardly a villain—but her vicious comments on South Indians echoed, as she bit through her food. She was entirely despicable and yet, her performance was far more enjoyable and biting.

Amrita has always chosen her roles carefully, and regardless of how the film fares, she always makes an impact. Regardless of her personal life that made headlines, she has always maintained her dignity and grace, and let her work speak for herself.