Netflix's Heeramandi: Sanjay Leela Bhansali says actors 'hijack' credit for good performance: 'Will you please acknowledge & say...'

Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s latest biggie Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar has garnered rave reviews among the audience across the globe. While the filmmaker is known for bringing out the best performances for his actors, he said it is wrong to credit actors alone for their performances as technicians and directors also contribute to that.

“A performance does not belong to an actor. A good performance belongs to a director, dialogue writer, cinematographer, art director, costume designer, choreographer, editor, and the guy who has painted the wall behind you. You are saying ‘my performance’, but you are never saying that these people are responsible for my performance. Everything is suddenly hijacked by the actor, which is where the problem in Indian cinema is,” said SLB while talking to Galatta Plus.

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The filmmaker shared that it is important for actors “to realise that I am not the star” and said, “The star is… everybody collectively comes and makes me a star. Will you please acknowledge and say I did this performance and I had a great dialogue writer, art director, costume guy, and make up person? You will rarely find an actor giving credit to other people for their performance.”

SLB added, “He/she has to be nurtured, he has to be given all the perks to be able to now go through the grind so I understand that he is also going through the grind.”

“There is a very strange way of me reaching out to them. So, sometimes my actors go to the extent of saying that ‘we were given the freedom and we did this’. No, there is no freedom. There is an illusion of freedom given to you, you are told what to do, sometimes subtly, sometimes obviously. Sometimes, the actors should have the freedom to able to express themselves in a certain way but that doesn’t mean that I did this performance, it belongs to me,” he said.

_Heeramandi_ features Manisha Koirala, Sonakshi Sinha, Aditi Rao Hydari, Sanjeeda Sheikh, Richa Chadha and Sharmin Segal in key roles.