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FRONT SEAT: Bluntly yours
Farah Shah exudes finesse and charm on and off the screen. Unlike her compeers, she gives lengthy answers if she feels like explicating. However, when she prefers to keep mum one cannot elicit more than monosyllables.
Seeking permission before lighting a cigarette it was hard to keep track of the words when she started talking. Her frequent fits of laughter are energetic and contagious. A combination of beauty and brains and no airs, she is a Virgo born on August 27. Brought up in Dubai, Farah is the youngest among four sisters and a brother. Beginning her career as an announcer at NTM in 1993, she escalated it by bagging anchorship of Yehi Tau Hai Lollywood and a serial Boota From Toba Tek Singh.
Believing life has served everything to her in a silver platter, including fame, Farah has striven to maintain her success graph. Taking every day as it comes and not planning her life or career painstakingly she hates people who daydream, doing nothing to realize them. “I neither think about the past nor worry about the future: I just live in the present,” she voices her views.
Farah vociferously states there is nothing she would do for free. On being warned she wouldn’t be paid for this interview, she said, ‘Neither do I expect you to!’ throwing back her head and laughing loudly
When Farah started working, her family was driven up the wall due to her staying out so late. She involved them in her work by relating career details or asking her mother to read the scripts. “However, I never invite my co-stars at home, it is completely off-limits. Once I am through shooting, it’s goodbye,” Farah explains.
Discussing childhood, she starts, giggling and smugly claims to have gotten away with murder. “I was a brat and blamed everything on my sister to save my skin,” she ruminates fondly with a cherubic look on her face. Her favourite memory is of a trip with her parents to Paris.
Her views on men: “They are more openhearted and considerate. I enjoy being with men more than with women.” Brushing her silky mop of hair with long manicured fingers, she states, “Most men enjoy being intimidated by women. “Farah appears to be quite intimidating most of the time. She continues,”They enjoy it and get their kicks out of it!”
Farah is proud of having carved a niche for herself at a young age. She likes being called a performer as she tries to get under the skin of her characters. “Most of all, I am proud of my talent and not here because of ‘resources’ that some others use.” She feels with so many channels, adroit and substandard work has been mixed.
“The actors who made it years ago do not realize that in those days, viewers had no choice. We take time to prove our mettle, as there are so many channels.”
On her choice of characters, she clarifies, “I detest simple roles as I want to prove myself as an artist everytime.” The more hard work Farah puts in the more she enjoys it, loving tragic roles but overacting in comedy on the director’s demand though she doesn’t like it. Her future projects include Chashmaan, Chamak — a play with Ahsan Talish on honour killings — and Lunda Bazaar.
Firmly believing in right and wrong, the young artist cannot stand it when someone tries to take her for a ride. She claims to be a warmhearted person, very emotional at times and very indifferent at others. Evidently, her tough exterior is a shield to rebuke unsolicited attention. Old age doesn’t bother but she is “insecure about losing people close to me.”
Farah fast paced in life herself like reading “something fast paced” but has no time to do it regularly. “I am into FBI cases and serial killers and I love movies like Seven and Silence of the Lambs,” she discloses.
Though she sets many a hearts aflutter she sheepishly reveals she has no romantic liaisons. “If I get into the dream man tangent, I cannot appreciate the real men I meet,” she says candidly. “I am not the Mills & Boons sort of a woman.”
Farah does plan to get married but not over a deadline. She is not on a lookout either. “You never get the right person that way. You rather meet wrong people, get desperate, and make a wrong choice as you feel you have done enough of ‘looking-out’.” She feels when someone comes from nowhere and disrupts your heartstrings, that is the right person.
Farah vociferously states there is nothing she would do for free. On being warned she won’t be paid for this interview, she says, “Neither do I expect you to!” throwing back her head and laughing unbridled.
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