Urvashi Rautela, who just attended the 76th annual Cannes Film Festival, used Instagram to reveal her newest acting role: playing Parveen Babi, a bombshell actress of the 1970s and 1980s.
The Instagram video that Rautela shared was a clip from the Hindi film screenplay Parveen Babi. The script excerpt confirmed that director Wasim S. Khan would bring Dhiraj Mishra’s words to the big screen. The model-turned-actor wrote in the post’s caption, “Bollywood failed Parveen Babi, but I will make you proud.”
Past Illustrations
Urvashi Rautela will play Parveen Babi in a biography that promises to be the first accurate depiction of her meteoric rise and tragic fall from Bollywood fame. Arth (1982) and Woh Lamhe (2006), both written and produced by Bhatt, are semi-autobiographical renderings of the late actor’s life that touch upon a brief period while she was in a relationship with the famed director.
The meteoric rise and collapse of Babi
Despite the brief length of her acting career, her IMDb website indicates that she appeared in 67 films. Her meteoric ascent to prominence coincided with the release of numerous critically acclaimed films, including Amar Akbar Anthony, Namak Halaal, Deewar, and Shaan. The fact that she was the first Bollywood celebrity to appear on the cover of Time in 1976 only added to her star power, despite her already impressive performing resume.
Both her film career’s success and the paparazzi’s and the public’s interest in her downward spiral contributed to her meteoric rise and subsequent stay in the public eye. She was frequently in the news because of her high-profile relationships with actors Kabir Bedi and Danny Denzongpa, as well as filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt.
The rapid decline in Babi’s mental state and subsequent diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia marked the beginning of her fall from prominence.
She stopped acting and making public appearances in her latter years, and at age 56, she was discovered dead in her home. The former Bollywood starlet’s story has become a terrible example of the many ways in which the Bollywood community has failed to help and support its stars.
