Soha Ali Khan had no plans to be an actor when she was growing up even though she saw her mother Sharmila Tagore working in films, and even her older brother Saif Ali Khan had been an active part of the movies since the 1990s. Soha had always been “very dismissive of films,” but in a recent interview, she shared how she made a bold decision to leave her banking career after Amol Palekar offered her the lead role in his film Paheli. However, things didn’t go as planned, leaving Soha without both a job and a film.
In a chat with Siddhartha Basu on his YouTube channel Quizzitok, Soha shared that she didn’t watch many Hindi films growing up and whatever she consumed in the 1990s, didn’t really appeal to her. “A lot of changing outfits and bizarre breaking into song and very regressive in certain ways” and Soha told herself that this was not something she wanted to do, and her parents, Sharmila and Mansoor Ali Khan Pataudi were quite relieved as they wanted her to do something else. “My parents were very happy. They had invested very heavily in my education and they wanted me to do something else, and I did. I was a banker,” she said but immediately added that she continued that job for just 13 months and quit when Amol offered her a role in Paheli.
“He wanted to launch me, he wanted to launch another actor,” she said and recalled that the film did not work out but in the meanwhile, she had already quit her well paying job. “I realised you should not quit your well paid corporate job if someone just offers you a film. There has to be a contract, there has to be a signing amount,” she recalled. Paheli was eventually made with Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukerji.
Soha did not inform her parents about her decision as she knew that they wouldn’t approve and when they found out three months later, they were in for a rude shock. “They found out three months later. I was jobless and I was paying Rs 17,000 rent for a flat in Lokhandwala and I had no income and they were not amused at all,” she recalled. Soha said that her mom had warned brother Saif that if Soha ended up joining films, it would be his fault. “My mother said to my brother, ‘If she joins films, it will be your fault because you would have filled her head with all kinds of things so don’t do that.’”
Soha said that she did not want to be in the profession as it would be seen as an easy way out by others and she was also skeptical if she would be as good as the rest of her family members. She said that “it may not be the correct career choice and that’s why I think I shied away from it.”
Soha Ali Khan made her Hindi film debut with Dil Maange More in 2004. She has not appeared in any Hindi films since 2018’s Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster 3.
