Sonali Bendre Told to 'Fatten Up' for Films, Reveals 'Producers Would Tell Me They Wanted Curves'

Actress Sonali Bendre has opened up about her experiences of being body shamed by film producers during her early days in Bollywood. The actor revealed that producers would often pressure her to gain weight as they wanted women who were “curvaceous” and “voluptuous”.

Talking to Hauterrfly, Sonali said, “When I came in the industry, heroines didn’t used to be this skinny. Every producer was trying to fatten me up all the time. They would just tell me to ‘eat eat eat bahut patli hai (she is too thin).’ They wanted curves. At that time, they wanted women who were curvaceous and voluptuous and who had curls in their hair. And I was straight black hair and I was skinny.”

Sonali Bendre made a comeback with the newsroom-drama series The Broken News in 2022. The sequel to the show is set to premiere on ZEE5 in May 2024. The actress, who has been vocal about her battle with cancer, recently talked about her journey in a Humans of Bombay podcast.

“I’d wake up thinking it was all a nightmare; I couldn’t believe that this could happen to me. That’s when I started to change the way I thought. Instead of ‘why me?’ I started asking, ‘Why not me?’ I started to feel grateful this wasn’t happening to my sister or my son. I realised I had the strength to deal with this, I had the resources to go to the best hospitals, and the support system to help me through this. Starting to ask ‘why not me?’ helped me start the healing process,” Sonali said.

In 2018, Sonali was diagnosed with cancer. She underwent treatment in New York and became cancer-free in 2021. Since then, she’s been supporting cancer survivors and raising awareness. During a conversation with News18 Showsha earlier, Sonali Bendre had talked about how she realised her love for acting after she was diagnosed with cancer. “Going through an illness gives you a lot of clarity, when you say, ‘I want to survive this’ or ‘When I come out what am I going to do?’ The only thing you can think is going in front of the camera and that’s when I realised that I would really not want to do nothing else but this (acting),” she had told us.