Ananya Panday has been on a roll of late, receiving significant critical appreciation for her last three projects-Kho Gaye Hum Kahan, Call Me Bae, and CTRL. In an uninhibited conversation with podcaster Raj Shamani, the actor opened up about how she really feels about being labelled a “star kid”-a term that has perhaps received the most amount of vitriol in the industry.
The tag has unjustly been stigmatized, according to Panday. “People have made it a bad word, but I don’t think it’s negative. When you’re watching something on screen, it’s easy to say, ‘Oh, she’s this star’s daughter.’ It shouldn’t be that way. Audiences should look at the performance and not at the background of the actor. The industry has given so much to us, and the audiences have loved us all. There are successful actors from film families, and there are those who have made it without that background,” she said.
As would attest by the example of Shah Rukh Khan, whom she has known well thanks to her friendship with his daughter, Suhana Khan, Panday said, “He’s the biggest star in our country, but he’s not from a film family. It’s actually just about the individual.” She further said the trend of using “star kid” as an insult is not a good one.
Ananya Panday is the daughter of veteran actor Chunky Panday and Bhavana Pandey. Chunky gained fame in the late 1980s and early 1990s before he began playing character roles. Ananya made her acting debut in 2019 with Student of the Year 2, produced by Karan Johar’s Dharma Productions. Her mother, too, gained fame soon after when she starred in the Netflix India reality show Fabulous Lives of Bollywood Wives.
Further, Ananya will star in another Karan Johar production with Akshay Kumar and R. Madhavan.
