Karisma recalls pre-vanity van days when stars changed outfits behind trees

Actress Karisma Kapoor, who is known for films like ‘Andaz Apna Apna’, ‘Coolie No.1’, and ‘Raja Hindustani’, among others, recently walked down the memory lane as she recalled how when she started out actors didn’t have a vanity van.

The actress, who serves as a judge on the dancing reality show ‘India’s Best Dancer Season 4’, spoke about the changes that the film industry has seen in the last 40-50 years.

“The first film in which I got to work on a monitor was ‘Dil To Pagal Hai’. It was during the dance of envy shot. Yash ji (Yash Chopra) got it, and Aditya Chopra and Uday Chopra were also on the sets... ‘Aur hum toh paagal ho gaye the’ (we went mad looking at the monitor). We thought, ‘Really? We could see what we have done in a shot’,” recalled Karisma, who made her acting debut in 1991 at the age of 16 with ‘Prem Qaidi’ opposite debutant Harish Kumar.

She also spoke about the first sync-sound film that she worked on -- ‘Zubeidaa’.

“I saw another milestone. The first film with sync-sound was ‘Zubeidaa’ directed by Shyam Benegal. It was the first movie where we put on lapel mics for ‘real life sound’,” she recalled.

The actress was referring to a major technological advancement in Hindi cinema when the industry moved on from studio dubbing of characters to the sync-sound where the dialogues were recorded live on the sets, which made the scene immersive besides adding more depth to the narrative.

She added, “The number of vans that are parked outside the sets of this show... We didn’t have anything like this. We used to go behind a tree and change our outfits for a scene, sometimes we went to the loo... So yeah, our industry has seen major changes in the last 40-50 years.”

The actress is seen as a judge alongside Terence Lewis and Geeta Kapoor in ‘India’s Best Dancer 4’.