Her last outing in Bollywood not only won her many accolades for a strong portrayal of a corrupt politician alongside Madhuri Dixit, but also won her many an award. Juhi Chawla, who was recently awarded the coveted Dada Saheb Phalke Award recently, was in Ahmedabad to inaugurate an event, opened up with Ahmedabad Times about her new innings into the contemporary Bollywood, regional films and more. Excerpts from a chat:

You visit Ahmedabad pretty often.
Yes and every time I have come here, has been a nice experience. This time round as well, the weather has been very nice, and I could see it when we were landing in Ahmedabad that it was beautifully green everywhere.

Despite critical acclaim, you are only doing select films.
I am in a phase of my career where I am being very selective about the kind of work I do. But I am open to doing films that will excite me and give me something new to do. I don't need to go out and ask for work, but I do wait for filmmakers to offer me a role that's something new.


A lot of Bollywood stars are doing television? Would you be interested in doing television?
It is true that many Bollywood stars are doing television, but they are limited to doing reality shows as judges or hosts. But a Bollywood star in a fiction show has not worked. Even though the audience loves and accepts us as actors in films, Bollywood actors are not accepted as characters in fiction shows on TV. May be the larger than life image of Bollywood stars makes it difficult for people to accept us, as television is more about normal and everyday people.

You have done a number of regional films and regional cinema is growing a lot.
These days Bollywood films have become too urban and most filmmakers are trying to capture the NRI sentiment. And somewhere the cultural essence that Bollywood films used to have is missing. There is a lot of scope for the regional cinema to explore that same cultural essence which people still want to see. At the end of the day, if you give your audience a good product, it will never fail.There are only a handful of films that have sincere dialogues, good songs or a powerful story. The films are very casual these days, there should be more sincerity in the films.