Actor Sayani Gupta looks back at her early days at FTII, recalling the tough decision to quit a high-paying corporate job at just 21 to pursue acting. She opens up about facing strong resistance from her mother, who disapproved of the profession. She revealed how her mother threatened to slit her wrist and even equated actors with “prostitutes.”

Sayani Gupta on mom’s opposition

In a chat on Cyrus Says, she shares, “My mom said, ‘I am going to slit my wrist if you go,’ and she couldn’t believe it. I was bored out of my skull those one and a half years. I made a lot of money because I was a workaholic, but this is not what I saw for myself… all my life, growing up, she didn`t let me go for theatre rehearsals and locked me in my room, saying actors are prostitutes. That was the idea of actors that she had.”