[caption id=“attachment_6571” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Ashish Chowdhry on the sets of Double Dhamaal. Raju Shelar/Firstpost[/caption] Time: Seven am. Location: Mehboob Studios, Mumbai. Ashish Chowdhry is on the sets of Double Dhamaal to get started with makeup for the day’s shoot. It is going to take him five hours to get his face, body and hair done. That’s right – five hours! He’s playing a woman today, a woman named Barbara. “Playing this role over the past year, I’ve had my body hair stripped off seven times! And the best part is, one day I am all clean with threaded eyebrows and no side burns, and the very next day I am playing a man in the same schedule. Then my eyebrows are filled in and my arms covered up, lest I look too feminine as a man. It is hilarious playing the part but the work before and after makeup is excruciatingly painful,” says Ashish, as he sits for the five-hour session. What does his wife Samita think of his physical transformations for the role? “Do wives ever notice their husbands?” he retorts, adding, “Sam has never noticed the changes, except sometimes she’s found my skin smoother and said, ‘Your skin feels good today’. So much for all this girly stuff! After the first schedule of Double Dhamaal, I actually went for a party after work and kept talking all night like a woman, flailing my arms and hands about like women. And as much as I tried, I couldn’t stop doing it. Now, I can switch on and off, but I have sworn off playing a woman on screen after this!” When his fake boobs arrive, it is one ghastly sight ‘cos they are the size of Kim Kardashian’s derrière! The 42C breast is then glued and maneuvered into place and spray-painted on with foundation to match his skin tone. And if that weren’t enough, he wears derrière pads sown into a pair of black cycling shorts to add curves to his lean frame. And then, his hair is clipped on and brushed out neatly to hide any makeup flaws around the neck that is holding up his glued-on chest. How long does it take him to take all this off? “It takes me about 45 minutes but that’s because I am impatient and I just pull my boobs off. The eye makeup is the most difficult to take off and I feel like panda-eyes for days after,” he says, as he practices a pout in the mirror. A team of six works tediously on Ashish’s transformation into Barbara, and sigh in relief when it is finally done. The actor puts on the satin pink dress as he steps out of his vanity van on to the set where his co-stars rib him mercilessly on his look, and of course, his added cleavage! An assistant hovers around him, waiting to glue on his freshly painted red nails just before filming commences. Just another day in the make-believe world of Bollywood.
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