In an exclusive conversation with Pinkvilla recently, Ratna Pathak Shah opened up about her passion for acting, and how it has remained consistent for nearly five decades. “But it is also a profession and I am much more sure of myself than I was when I started, obviously. But frankly even when I came back from the NSD (National School Of Drama). In 1974 I had just finished school, I went to NSD in 1978. I came back from NSD in 1981, and I would say that is when I actually started thinking of myself as a professional. Before that I was doing theatre all the time, all kinds of plays, even in the holidays during NSDs. I would come back and we would do shows. But post NSD when I actually started expecting work and getting a little bit of work, which was paying work, so I felt like a professional. So yea, from 1981 onwards, and it took me a long time to understand the business of acting,” shares the actress.
However, Ratna Pathak Shah finds that strange as she comes from a family of actors. “My mother was an actor, my aunt was an actor, my older aunt was a theatre teacher, playwright, and an educationalist. So I have grown up backstage practically, because I used to go with my mother for all her shows. Every Saturday, Sunday, I would be hanging around backstage in some theatre while she was doing these absolutely horrible Gujarati melodramas. I never saw her plays, because they were all about weeping and crying. My mother was being beaten up by some horrible saas or something. I hated those plays so I never saw them,” says Ratna. 
Though, the Sarabhai Vs Sarabhai actress informs that she loves the atmosphere backstage. “You know actors getting ready, going from place to place, going into the wings, waiting for their entry, technical crew moving around - I loved all that. So I used to be very happy backstage. But when I actually started acting myself, I realised I don’t know how to do it at all. I mean I was okayish, but I was certainly no good. I didn’t know how to act, quite honestly. I was doing what I had seen my mum do, and what I had seen other people do. But that wasn’t good enough. So that's one of the reasons I went to the NSD, because I wanted to train and learn how to become a better actor. Unfortunately, there were no acting teachers in NSD,” says Ratna Pathak Shah.
She further adds, “That’s one of the big tragedies in India. We have created no trainers for actors. Almost everyone who is running a shop just now, and I used the word shop. It’s not an acting training institute, they are shops. Those guys are making money, cheating young people. I mean, the kind of stuff that goes on in these acting shops is appalling, and kids are paying lakhs for that. But NSD was not like that. So we got trained in theatre and I learnt a lot, but about acting I didn't learn much at all.”
To see the full interview, watch the below video:
