Sep 10, 2026 8:00pm IST
Pratibha Ranta Reveals She Chose Acting Against Her Family’s Wishes: ‘They Thought I Had Lost My Mind’ (EXCLUSIVE)
For Pratibha Ranta, acting was never simply a career choice. It was a cherished dream. However, the idea of pursuing her dream was too far removed from her reality. While her family struggled to understand the obsession, Ranta had begun manifesting a life on screen.
Ranta, who made her Hindi film debut with Kiran Rao’s “Laapata Ladies,” and whose upcoming series “The Revolutionaries,” directed by Nikkhil Advani, has just dropped, talks about the resistance she initially faced at home and the conviction that made her pursue acting anyway. “Just to think of becoming an actor, for a girl from Shimla, was a rebellious thought,” shares Ranta.
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Her introduction to the profession had largely been through what she saw on screen. “I was imagining a life for myself sitting in my farmhouse and thinking of being an actress. My family thought I’d lost her mind.” The reaction was understandable, she says, because nobody in her family had any connect or contact with the film industry. “They don’t know anything about it. They were very scared.”
Ranta, however, wasn’t willing to abandon the idea simply because it was unfamiliar to everyone around her. “I don’t know how, but I had some confidence. I thought, I just need to go to Mumbai and see how it feels. But my first task was to convince my family that I don’t want to have a conventional career.”
For Ranta, acting wasn’t an impulsive decision. Performing was been woven into her life from a young age. “I wanted to do something different that excited me. I’d always been very inclined to the performing arts. Growing up in my school, I used to participate a lot in dance and my plays. It’s always been an important part of my life. It was difficult for my family to understand that. I had to make them sit down and convince them.”
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That conversation eventually changed everything. Her family’s initial apprehension has now given way to pride and, amusingly, perhaps even an enthusiasm for the very career they once struggled to understand. “Then things changed. Obviously now everybody is happy. They want to send everybody to this field. I really like that change,” she says. That change has extended beyond Ranta herself. Her cousin sister is pursuing modeling. “I am really happy that they are finally getting to do what they always wanted to do.”
That sense of breaking convention also resonates with the characters Ranta has chosen to play. In “The Revolutionaries,” she steps into the role of Pratibha, a character about whom little is known, giving the actor considerable freedom to construct her character. “Right now I’m in a place where I’m trying to explore and test my versatility in every part that’s coming to me. ‘The Revolutionaries’ brought a very fresh energy in me as a performer. There’s just one specific piece of information about Pratibha. So, we had a lot of freedom to bring in nuances. There’s a lot of research that’s gone into studying other women revolutionaries in that age,” she concludes.
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