At the 76th Cannes Film Festival, Actor and L’Oreal Paris ambassador Aditi Rao Hydari reminds herself: “I am because of cinema, and what drives me is cinema.” Having been in the industry for 20 years, making her debut with the 2006 film Malyala film Prajapathi, the actress views cinema and her experience through a first-hand, personal lens. In this interview, she talks about the kind of impact she wants to make on the red carpet, how she understands the role of women in film, and what success at Cannes looks like to her.
“What I do, and how I’m able to surrender to a director and what I do in front of the camera. That is my priority,” Hydari says, when asked if she feels she needs to try harder to make an impact on the red carpet due to the sheer number of people walking it. The actor understands that people are always going to talk, and that in such scenarios, she prefers to stay true to herself. “I can only be authentic to what I feel makes me feel good, and I think that’s very important,” she adds.
Hydari perception of beauty and authenticity is clear. To her, making an impact starts with how you treat those around you. “Beauty is genuinely more than what you look. beauty is what you feel, and it is very important for me to feel good,” she says, adding that she wishes to achieve this in a way that is unique to her “but also be efficient, deliver, and be kindhearted when I’m doing it because there are so many people who are working behind the camera to make it happen for me,” she adds.
When the conversation moves to the role and representation of women in cinema, it is safe to say that Hydari speaks for generations of women in the industry when she says “It’s something that I wish wasn’t even a conversation. I wish it was more effortless to have it this way.”
“When you listen to a story, it’s that childlike wonder that kind of makes you forget the world, the suspension of disbelief that happens because you surrender to the story and I don’t think at that point you’re thinking about gender,” she adds, explaining that when we attach gender to cinema, we think we are being inclusive because by being more expansive, while in reality “we’re becoming even more specific in many ways.”
Conducting herself with the “grace of the soul and the heart” is one of the main ways Hydari views success at Cannes. The actress is least bothered with proving herself to people, as focusing on being herself is what makes her happy. “I don’t want comparison. People don’t do that with boys. Why do they do that so much with us? Everything is a comparison, why? It’s not cool. It’s not okay,” she says, aware of just how easily the issue around the portrayal of women transcends to platforms as global as Cannes.
Hydari also believes that intention is an inextricably part of this success and how one shows up at the red carpet. She feels that when you have the right intention, you don’t have to worry about the things you have no control over–even when it comes to cinema. “The intention is the most important thing. So, if you have a filmmaker who loves cinema who loves telling stories and they make a film, it will always be cinema. It will always be part of cinematic legacy because whether it works or not at the box office, in the long term it will always be cinema."