Mohit Suri’s Saiyaara proved to be a perfect launchpad for newcomers Ahaan Panday and Aneet Padda. However, this journey was not easy for the latter. In a recent interview, Aneet recalled how she landed on scam websites in an attempt to crack audition. She also reveals every production house has terrible audition clips and biodata of her.
Aneet Padda on the audition scam
Aneet was bitten by the acting bug since the age of 10, when her school play was lauded by classmates. However, lack of support from friends and family demotivated her. “For the longest time, I told myself, ‘You are so silly for even wanting to do anything about this.’ I stopped dreaming for a while,” she shared with Cosmopolitan India.
At 17, Aneet began searching online for acting auditions and, in the process, landed on shady websites. She recalled, “Almost every production house in the Hindi film industry has my audition tape, a terrible biodata, and Snapchat filter pictures.” Aneet revealed that she even came across shady websites that were `basically scams.` She also recalled sending cold emails to 50–70 production companies during the pandemic when she was desperate to find something credible. However, she soon realised that it was casting agencies who negotiated opportunities on behalf of actors.
Aneet Padda on Alia Bhatt praising her
Aneet Padda recalls her special moment with Alia Bhatt after Saiyaara as the actress personally called her and “gushed” about the film for almost ten minutes. She said, “I would talk to myself in the bathroom mirror (when I was young) and practise all of Bhatt’s monologues, thinking, ‘How can I do it?’ and then, ‘How can I do it my way?’”
Talking about Saiyaara success, she added, “This film hasn’t just done well in terms of business. It takes a village to make a film, whether it was the crew, or us as actors, the direction team—everybody on set worked hard. Maybe it was just that? They (audience) could feel the heart of the film.”
Apart from Saiyaara, Aneet appeared in Revathi’s slice-of-life drama Salaam Venky, which also featured Kajol and Vishal Jethwa in lead roles. She then appeared in the web series Big Girls Don’t Cry.
