Madhuri Dixit on 'Mrs. Deshpande' and 40 Years of Cinema: 'When I Walk Into My House, the Fame Stays Outside'

In Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly, George Clooney plays a movie star who quietly admits that decades of performing for the camera have left him feeling disconnected from reality. "My life doesn’t really feel real," he says. It’s a line that lingers, especially for someone like Madhuri Dixit, who has spent over four decades in front of the camera and remains one of Hindi cinema’s most enduring stars.

For Dixit, however, the secret to staying authentic, she tells THR India, lies in never carrying stardom home. “For me, the key has always been staying real as a person. I don’t carry the baggage of my popularity or my films. When I walk into my house, all the fame stays outside. It’s just me who walks in,” she says, crediting her parents—especially her mother—for keeping her grounded throughout her journey.

"So, I see myself like any other professional; You’re a journalist, I’m an actor, someone else is a director or a businessman. I’ve never carried the baggage with me.”

Madhuri Dixit

Dixit’s film career is marked by remarkable numbers. She has spent over four decades in the industry, made her debut in her mid-teens, appeared in more than 90 films, and began dancing at the age of three. So when she is asked what cinema truly means to her, she pauses, smiles, and lets out an instinctive, “Oh my God...”

"It is something very deep for me. Cinema is a way of emoting. I feel extremely comfortable in front of the camera; it is my friend, and I love telling stories. I love stepping into different characters.”

She is now gearing up for her JioHotstar series Mrs Deshpande, in which she plays a "dark", unconventional role. Dixit reflects on her ever-expanding screen legacy, which has been shaped by instinct as much as by evolution. As someone who has worked across radically different eras of Hindi cinema, the actor notes how dramatically the filmmaking process itself has changed.

"There was far more intuition among directors back then. Often, dialogues were being written on set. We’d be waiting while the writer finished, then we’d quickly memorise our lines, the director would decide the shot division on the spot and we’d just perform.”

The pace was relentless. Actors routinely worked on multiple films at the same time, often shooting two shifts a day. “We were doing three or four films a year, sometimes more. One film in the morning, another in the evening. It was a completely different way of making movies! It was all very instinctive, very in-the-moment. There were only a handful of productions that were truly organised like Yash Chopra, BR Chopra, Rajshri Productions or Mukta Arts. Even then, we never shot an entire film at once! We’d shoot in ten-day schedules, watch the rushes, and then move forward. We were thriving in chaos!" she laughs.

Madhuri Dixit

Today, Dixit observes, filmmaking is far more structured and methodical. “Everything is prepared in advance now, from the prep for roles, look tests, to workshops. It’s a far more educated way of working,” she says, acknowledging that the industry’s evolution has brought both discipline and depth to the craft.

That evolution is perhaps most visible in the way women are written and positioned on screen today. According to Dixit, contemporary filmmakers are increasingly moving away from one-dimensional portrayals. “Women are now being looked at in a more layered way, not in black-and-white terms."

OTT platforms, she feels, have accelerated this shift significantly. Mrs. Deshpande, in which she plays a serial killer, is a case in point. “If this had been a theatrical film, I don’t think people would have immediately said, ‘Yes, let’s cast a big actress in this role. But OTT makes that possible because you’re not constrained by target audiences or box-office formulas. You’re free to tell the story the way you want to.”

Adapted from the French thriller La Mante and directed by Nagesh Kukunoor, the series also stars Siddharth Chandekar and Priyanshu Chatterjee. The six-episode psychological thriller is produced by Applause Entertainment in association with Kukunoor Movies.