The legendary Vijayashanti who has a formidable reputation in Telugu cinema, had a brief but interesting stint in Hindi cinema. She played the hero in N Chandra’s Tejasvini. Though the film didn’t do as well as expected, Vijayashanti as the no-nonsense cop was a rage.
In an interview some years ago with this writer, Vijayashanti recalled her brief association with Hindi cinema with fondness. “The first Hindi film I did was Eeshwar with Anil Kapoorji. It was a lovely film. And I had a lovely role in it. Tejasvini came next and I was suddenly looked at as an action hero.”
Tejasvini got her the label of the female Amitabh Bachchan. “In Tejasvini I played a cop and did my own stunts. I never imagined I had it in me to do those kicks and somersaults. The idea of an empowered female bringing the baddies to book was very appealing. I was offered many cop roles. I turned all of them down.”
Speaking of being the lady Bachchan, Vijayashanti got the chance to do the original. “I also did a film with the great Amitabh Bachchan called Zamanat which, for reasons unknown to me, never got released. That remains a regret. Amitji is such a great star. They used to call me ‘Lady Amitabh’ in Telugu cinema because of the author-backed strong characters I played.”
After delivering hit after hit in the 1980s and 90s in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi in author-backed female-oriented roles, why was she missing from the screen since 2006?
“Politics, Sir, politics,” she said with pleasurable laughter. “I decided to plunge myself into the creation of Telangana. And I didn’t to do it half-heartedly, didn’t want people to point a finger at me and say, ‘Look, another actor is using politics to get noticed.’ It didn’t even occur to me that I could use my strong image in cinema to propagate my political ideas. To me, cinema was cinema and politics was politics.”
When she plunged into politics she had no intention of ever returning to cinema. “I had been acting for 40 years when politics beckoned. I didn’t want to continue with a film career. It had to be politics wholeheartedly.”
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