“Industry kids have certain advantages”

Bollywood actress Parineeti Chopra feels that the beauty of the Hindi film industry is that – talent, and to some extent luck, are the only things that work here. For ages, a debate has been constantly raging about 'insiders' and 'outsiders'; and that how insiders get things easily. Conversely, insiders have always maintained that the advantage remains only till their first film gets released.

“Kids who are from the industry have certain advantages,” Parineeti feels. “They understand the business more because they have either parents, brothers or sisters who are film-makers, actors, etc. They have been around scripts all their lives. Plus, they know how a movie set functions and, in fact, they get to visit many of them,” she says.

 “The beauty of the industry is that talent, and to some extent luck, are the only things that work. So, wherein it's easy to get the first break, it's the audiences liking that decides the rest. It's a catch-22 situation,” she says.

But is nepotism a reality in Bollywood? “Honestly, I am not sure. I have a 50-50 opinion about it. Sometimes, you see it happening around you. Other times, when you're a non-film person and don't have contacts and still get work, you are like, 'No, decisions are taken based on who you are and what you are,'” she adds.

Like Parineeti, there are other 'outsiders' such as Sushant Singh Rajput, Sidharth Malhotra, Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh doing well. “But you also have Varun (Dhawan), Arjun (Kapoor), Shraddha (Kapoor) and Alia (Bhatt), who have grown up in film families, so they understand movies very well. But actors like me, who are from outside, have reached a position due to our hard work and because audiences have accepted us. So, ultimately somewhere the equation ends up getting equalised,” she says.