Sanjay Dutt Is Aditi Rao‘s ‘BFG’

The very beautiful Aditi Rao  has just finished with the  most emotional experience of her career. She  played daughter to Sanjay Dutt on Omung Kumar’s Bhoomi.

Aditi is filled with hope and magic. “It was so fulfilling.By the end  of it I really felt like we had developed a father-daughter relationship.”

Aditi now has a special name for Dutt.  “I call him BFG…have you read Roald Dahl’s book and seen Speilberg’s  film? Mr Dutt is like the  Big Friendly Giant in that  film. He was so protective and so affectionate throughout the shooting.And what I really liked about MrDutt was that , like me, he doesn’t like to rehearse. I get very nervous working with actors who rehearse. I like to go on camera and then get into my character. He  likes to do the same. That made our on-screen chemistry really interesting.Each time he would do a take differently. If in one take he would pull my ear in the next one he would tap my head affectionately. So there was always that sense of the unknown when facing the camera with him.”

Incidentally both Dutt and Aditi dug into their lives to add a certain heft to their father-daughter bonding in  Bhoomi. Dutt has a real-life daughter just about Aditi’s age.

“That did help,” she concedes. “I lost my father three years ago. There were moment while we shot when my eyes would well up with real tears. There is specially one sequence with Mr Dutt where I  needed no glycerine.”

In Bhoomi Aditi plays the title role and she’s excited about it. “It’s my first title role. Omung Sir writes his women’s roles very feelingly. We  only have to look at Mary Kom and Sarabjit to know what I mean.”

Bhoomi is shot in Agra. And Aditi enjoyed every minute of her stay there. “Every city every film is a learning experience.”