Sushmita Sen to dub in her own voice for her Bengali film

25 Nov 2014

Sushmita Sen who turns a year older on November 19 has secured herself a very unusual birthday gift. There is good news for Ms Sen's fans. She has managed to convince the director Srijit Mukherjee of her first Bengali film Nirbak to let her speak in the film in her own voice.

Though she doesn't speak Bengali at home with her daughters, Sushmita Sen loves her mother tongue and is practicing towards thinking in Bangla.

Says the director, "I was surprised by how fluently Sushmita spoke Bangla. She speaks better Bangla than Raima Sen although the latter spends a majority of her time working in Kolkata. So yes, Sushmita will speak her own lines. I firmly believe when you dub an actor's voice you reduce the performance by 50 percent. Rituda (the late Rituparno Ghosh) and I used to have long discussions on this." There is a tradition of actresses from Mumbai working in Bangla films getting their voices dubbed by local Bengali artistes. Rituparno dubbed Aishwarya Rai's voice in Chokher Bali and Bipasha Basu's voice in Sob Charitra Kalponik although the latter speaks Bengali.

Apparently, Sushmita insisted in doing her own lines and worked hard on getting the Kolkata twang.

Says Srijit, "Sushmita is one of the most hard-working artistes I've ever worked. And so hassle-free and easy-going, no airs at all. We had a blast shooting."