I was 13 years old when I did my first photo shoot. I was coming back home, from school, around 1.30pm with a friend of mine whose name was Anita and who, unfortunately, I lost contact with, when we saw an advert about modelling, something like “Do you want to be a model? Do your modelling portfolio with us”. Anita looked at me and said: “Call them! You’re so skinny and tall, you could be a model”.
From that moment on, I did all kinds of modelling jobs, some more or less glamorous, I did local competitions, I won some, lost others, I got nice awards, paid and unpaid work. I was never a famous model or those kinds of models you see doing magazine covers. I was studying and doing local shows, catalogues, events and promotions. I earned enough to buy my own clothes, to go out with my friends, to fix my teeth and get acting courses later on. But more than anything, what modelling really taught me was to learn to develop a really thick skin. I can say that my lessons in rejection started when I was 13 years old; I met all kinds of people in this business, those who were nice to me, believing I was good enough, encouraging me to go further, others who laughed at me, telling me I could never be a model because my hips were too big, my face too commercial, my hair too difficult to style, my face wasn't weird enough to be a top model. Once, while doing a fitting for a fashion show, someone told me I had 48 hours to lose 5 kilos because the dress was suppose to float on my body. Well, 15 minutes later the designer came in and said the dress looked amazing on me and that I should not loose any weight. The same designer, on the same week, had told my agency that he was not sure about me for the show because my face was too commercial. Yet, my agent finally convinced him to give me the job, surely enough he got back to her after the fitting, saying that he was really happy because he liked my walk and, after all, he thought my face was not as pretty and commercial as he had thought. Another confusing moment happened when I went to two agencies in the same day and I showed my same portfolio to both of them. One said that my pictures were too commercial and the other agency said they were too editorial! I remember laughing for the rest of the day thinking “What the hell do they want?”.
Well, thanks to these unclear moments in this profession, I started to look at myself and realising that I would never know what people want, what people like or not on me because it will always depend on their mood, on my luck and uncontrollable variables of trends. Everything is just too random and the only think I could count on was me, on my attitude towards all those critics and my preparation to every single job. I stopped adapting my self-esteem and confidence to other people’s opinions and I apply this to my acting experience. One day you are amazing, your performance is outstanding and the day after people are not so sure anymore. In such a sensitive job, where we are always playing with our emotions and memories, I learned - and I am still learning – that the worst thing to be is too sensitive and the best thing to do is to create and reinforce everyday our thick skin through an emotional intelligence.
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| By Anai Bharucha |
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