Sonakshi Sinha recently recalled a time when an older male actor refused to co-star in a film with her, reasoning that she looked older than him. Sonakshi reflected on the struggles of being a woman actor in Bollywood and how they have to take all the brunt of everything.

In an interaction with Zoom, Sonakshi said, “It’s very evident that the same kind of expectations do not (apply) to a man. They are not age-shamed when they are romancing women who are 30 years younger than them. They are not shamed for having bellies, or less hair. It’s very obvious that the women have to take the brunt of it all.”

She added, “In fact, I have had to deal with actors who are older than me who have said, ‘She looks older than us’. I just want to thank them. I don’t want to work with a person like you. It’s always the woman who is struggling to move past that, to push those barriers down, and to pave her way in something that should be as smooth as it is for a man. We’re all artists, at the end of the day, and for women, it shouldn’t be that much of a struggle.”

Sonakshi was recently seen in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar, which released on Netflix on May 1.