With the success of her latest release, ‘Gadar Part 2’, the character of ‘Sakeena Begum’ who was essayed by the actress Ameesha Patel has almost become a houseful name. This has resulted in Ameesha Patel garnering immense praise and performance in the film industry. However, it is not the first time that she has been showered with so much praise. After the success of the first two films of her career, ‘Gadar’ and ‘Kaho Na Pyar Hai’, the actress was bathing in the glory of her first success, when she faced an unusual reaction from the side of the renowned director Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who had showered praises on her but even demanded that she should retire. The intriguing statement has not just shed light on the remarkable career of the actor but also the quirky and funny nature of the grave period drama director.

Early Retirement Advised After Early Success

The recently released movie of Ameesha Patel and Sunny Deol ‘Gadar Part 2’ has garnered several crores of rupees within a short period of its release. The film has grossed an amount of almost 388.60 crores of money and is still on the top of the charts of the most successful movies this year. In a recently conducted interview, Ameesha Patel revealed how she would face tremendous success within her few years of joining the tinsel town of the Hindi movie industry and the praises that she would be showered with, some being quite unusual and funny.

Ameesha Patel stepped into the domain of the Hindi movie industry with her first debut ‘Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai’ opposite the Greek God Hrithik Roshan and that movie saw her rising to immense heights of success. The pairing and chemistry on the screen between Raj and Sonia had won her immense acceptance and appreciation. That not only won her a solid footing in the field of Hindi movie industry but at the same time, also won her several other blockbuster movies such as ‘Gadar’. Quite similar to her first film with Hrithik Roshan, this film also won her a strong base of fans and her pairing and romantic chemistry on the screen with Sunny Deol propelled her to immense heights of popularity among the film-watching public.

This was then when she was called in by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, who personally penned down a beautiful letter of congratulations for her. When Ameesha Patel went to meet the period drama freak, the ‘Goliyon Ki Rasleela: Ram Leela’ director congratulated her in quite a quirky way that even left Ameesha Patel baffled for the rest of the day. The director told her that the immeasurable success that she has been able to achieve with just two of her films has surpassed everything else. While other actors would struggle their entire lives in the Hindi movie industry, she would be in the seventh heaven with just two films to boast of. So, it would be better for her if she could retire so that other struggling actors and actresses at that time would have had some chance to prove themselves. “Mr. Sanjay Leela Bhansali, after watching Gadar, wrote a really beautiful letter, a complimentary letter to me. And when I had a meeting with him, he said, ‘Ameesha, you should retire now.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘Because you’ve already achieved in two films what most people don’t achieve in their entire career. Once in a lifetime, a Mughal-e-Azam, a Mother India, a Pakeezah, and a Sholay get made. You had it in your second film. So what’s next?’ I didn’t understand it at that time because I was a kid, so new to the film world,” told a laughing Ameesha Patel on the online website.

The ‘Leela’ of Sanjay’s Advice

In the same interview, Ameesha Patel recalled how within a few years, the advice that was given to her by the director turned out to be so true for her in her career. She recalled that after the two most blasting moments in her career, the choices that she made regarding her later films could never even reach the success that she had previously experienced. Some of them have even failed to leave an impact in the minds of the audience. She says that even before the release of her latest movie, she would still be recognized by people for her first two films, even though she had a long list of other less to moderately successful movies in her career. Gadar set the bar so high that anything in my films that were superhits after that, whether it was Humraaz (2002), Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007) or Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (2007), it was a straight comparison to Gadar,” said the ‘Sakeena’ of the Hindi movie industry.

While the comment of Sanjay Leela Bhansali would point at Ameesha Patel, it has laid focus on the broader perspective of the Hindi movie industry. It focuses on the fact that stability in the Hindi movie industry does not just depend on the number of films that have been done by a person but on the level of performance that has been shown by the person. It is calculated by the lasting impact that the movie leaves on the mind of the audience.

Meanwhile, Gadar Part 2 is going through a blasting moment, having been able to cross ‘Pathaan’ on the first day of its release. It stars Sunny Deol in the role of ‘Tara Singh’, who travels to the country of Pakistan to fight and rescue his son, ‘Jeete’, played by Utkarsh Sharma, from the prison of the Pakistani Army. The film also stars Ameesha Patel as the iconic ‘Sakina Begum’, the wife of ‘Tara Singh’. It has become the highest-earning Hindi movie of the year so far.