'I was called Fatrina'
Entertainment Correspondent
Published:26 Feb 2021, 11:16 AM
'I was called Fatrina'
Bollywood Actress Zareen Khan, who made a splashy debut but couldn't stake out a spot in Bollywood, has said that she is 'more than a pretty face', and was never given a chance to break out of her image as a Katrina Kaif lookalike.
Zareen, who made her debut opposite Salman Khan in 2010's Veer, made headlines at the time for her physical resemblance to Katrina, a frequent co-star of Salman's.
In a new interview, she said that even the audience is culpable in promoting this narrative. She told the Times of India, "Yes, in the beginning, it was the whole lookalike thing... Honestly, I don't even know from where it had creeped out. Even before my pictures or my interviews came out, a random picture, from my Facebook account, was being circulated with claims that she looks like Katrina."
She continued, "Back then, social media was not as powerful as it is today, and we were majorly dependent on media houses and newspapers. So, I somehow feel that the public was not really given a chance to see me and have a perception of their own. It was fed to them as gossip. Our audience is also a little gullible that way, believing whatever they are fed instead of forming their own opinion."
She said that her weight also became an issue. As someone who weighed 100 kgs and always thought of herself as 'fat', Zareen said that she was shocked that even after losing 40 kgs, she was still being fat-shamed. "I was called ‘Fatrina’. Even when I went out for events, nothing good was ever written about me; they would talk only about my weight," she said.