Thaindian News

By Subhash K. Jha
Mumbai, July 31 (IANS) Bollywood actress Shazahn Padamsee was intimidated by the thought of working with an actor so much her senior like Ajay Devgn in Madhur Bhandarkar’s “Dil To Bachcha Hai Jee”. But the director convinced her of the relevance of the age gap between them in the film.

In “Dil To Bachcha Hai Jee”, Shazahn plays the nice sweet Catholic girl who works in Ajay Devgn’s company. Soon the 40-year old man begins to get attracted to the 20-year old girl.

“Initially I was nervous. But I knew I was going to be taken care of. Madhur Bhandarkar is one of the best directors ever. Look at the kind of magic he works with his heroines. When I saw ‘Chandni Bar’ I was blown. It’s the best Hindi film I’ve seen,” says Shazahn.

Shazahn’a role requires a lot of dancing. But luckily she is equipped to handle that.

“After ‘Rocket Singh’ I went down South to do two films — one in Tamil and the other in Telugu. Both required a lot of Bollywood-style dancing. So I can manage the movements well now,” she says.

And Shazahn is willing to put in long hours to get her steps with Devgn right.

It’s interesting how Shazahn bagged the role which had several short-listed finalists, including producer Kumar Mangat’s daughter Ameeta.

Madhur was on the look-out for a very young and relatively unrecognised girl to play out the older-man-young-girl romance.

He spotted Shazahn at the premiere of “Raajneeti” and immediately knew she was the one he was looking for.

Bhandarkar quickly looked around at the premiere for the actor to seek his approval for the actress.

Says a source: “Bhandarkar was shocked to know that Devgn was not coming for the ‘Raajneeti’ premiere. He had to find another opportunity to introduce Shazahn to Devgn.”