Sangeeta Bijlani, Pooja Batra, Sushmita Sen, Deepika Padukone — what’s common between the three of them? Yes, they’re all former models who became leading Hindi film actors. Another commonality is the height — they were all extremely tall women in an industry where most of their male co-stars were short, but with a rather tall ego that their leading ladies had to look shorter than them.
“It was tough. I remember I was told by Sangeeta Bijlani, ‘You don’t have a chance in the movies because you’re too tall,’” recalled Pooja Batra. Sangeeta, who made her Bollywood debut with Qatil (1988) opposite Aditya Pancholi, worked only for eight years as a leading lady, her last film being Nirbhay (1996) opposite Mithun Chakraborty.
Pooja admitted she was disappointed by Sangeeta’s word of caution. “She’s my idol She’s beautiful, and she’s a model too,” she told Harper’s Bazaar India. “I gave every role I got my best even though the heroes got intimidated because of my stature. It’s true I didn’t book a lot of movies because of my height. I lost out on a lot of good roles,” she confessed. Pooja claimed that tall actors like her and Sangeeta paved the way for tall female actors like Sushmita and Deepika. “They should say, ‘Thank you,’” said Pooja, laughing.
The actor, who made her Hindi film debut with Priyadarshan’s 1997 hit action film Virasat, revealed she’d do “half-splits” in front of the camera in close-up shots to make her heroes look taller. In her debut movie, Pooja wore colour-coordinated outfits to look shorter. “Even in Hollywood, I respect all these tall actresses like Naomi Watts and Charlize Theron. I know how hard it’s for a woman to make it despite the height,” she added.
Pooja Batra and Anil Kapoor in Virasat.
While she had to look shorter even while sharing screen space with relatively tall actors like Anil Kapoor, she recalled the only actor who never had an issue with her height was Sangeeta’s ex-boyfriend, Salman Khan, with whom she was cast opposite in K Murali Mohana Rao’s 2000 romantic comedy Kahin Pyaar Na Ho Jaaye. “Salman never had a problem. He was one guy who’d be like, ‘Wear your heels, I don’t have a problem’. He’d be confident in his own skin,” said Pooja.
A couple of years ago, even Sushmita Sen claimed that Salman encouraged her to wear heels so she looked better on the sets of David Dhawan’s 1998 hit rom-com Biwi No. 1. “When David would say on the sets of Biwi No, ‘Sush, don’t wear heels’, I would come in flats like, ‘Okay, no problem’. And Salman would say, ‘That’s a nice outfit, but why are you wearing those chappals?’ I would say, ‘Because you are short, I can’t wear heels,’ so he burst out laughing and said, ‘Go and wear heels. I’ll manage my height, you manage yours’. So, I thought that was very progressive. It is something about Salman I have always enjoyed and loved,” she told Mashable in 2024.
Salman Khan and Sushmita Sen in Biwi No. 1.
But she believes Hindi cinema has come a long way from there, not just because of perception change, but also to technical reasons like an alteration in the cinemascope. “It’s changed for the better because the cinemascope is more latitude than longitude, so no matter how tall you are, you’d get shortened. So, the short people are at a disadvantage because they could look plumper than what they are. Most of the world’s most famous actors aren’t very tall,” she reasoned.
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In order to dress shorter, and also to bring her sense of fashion to her onscreen looks, Pooja would always wear her personal clothes in her films. “Let her wear what she’s wearing,” she’d recall the directors saying on sets when she showed up in her personal wardrobe. But they’d also ask her to remove makeup since they wanted a natural look. “I was like, at least sunblock toh lagane do (let me wear sunblock),” she said, laughing.
Pooja shot to fame in 1993 when she was crowned Miss India International. After subsequently becoming one of the top models of India, Pooja transitioned into films. She appeared in Hindi films like Kuch Khatti Kuch Meethi Jodi No. 1, Nayak: The Real Hero (2001), and Talaash: The Hunt Begins (2003), along with a few Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam movies.
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Pooja went the Madhuri Dixit way in 2003 when she tied the knot with an orthopaedic surgeon and relocated to Los Angeles, California. But she moved back to India after filing a divorce in 2011. She then returned to movies with Hum Tum Shabana (2011), ABCD 2 (2015), and other Hollywood movies. She remarried in 2019, tying the knot with actor Nawab Shah.
