Swastika Mukherjee: Successful women are targeted and humiliated 

From trolling to rape threats, popular Bengali actor Swastika Mukherjee has dealt with a lot lately. The actor says in our society, successful women are always targeted and humiliated. However, she adds, she has never let people shame her for the choices she has made in life.

"In our society, people tend to get intimidated by successful women and therefore start trolling and humiliating you. Our hard work is always discounted, our talent never appreciated. If we are pretty and successful, we are gossiped about, and it is said, 'she must be sleeping around'. If I am really working hard to earn money and then buy an expensive car, they say, 'she must have got a gift from her boss'. When a man buys the same car, society looks at it as a result of his hard work. But honestly, I am immune to such criticism," Swastika told IANS.

"Now, when I hear anything of that sort, I am like 'Yeah, God has given me beautiful legs, what I do with it is my call'. I do not feel ashamed of my choices in life and the success I have achieved, because I did not get anything overnight. I have been working since the year 2000," she added.

Besides numerous Bangla hits, Swastika has worked in Bollywood films such as Dil Bechara and Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!, besides the web series Paatal Lok. Although she is the daughter of veteran Bengali actor Santu Mukherjee, Swastika never wanted to be an actor.

"My father never took to a film set. Whenever my sister and I asked him if we could come along to his set, Baba would reply, 'Do your friends go to their father's office? My film set is my workplace, my office. Why would you come to my office?'" recalled Swastika.

"So, until I went for the shooting of my debut TV show, I did not know anything about the shooting. But honestly, in my first show I was very bad, and people wrote reviews slamming me taking my father's name. That was the time I realised I have to give my 100 per cent to acting. I think the show Ek Akasher Neeche changed everything for me. I worked on it for around three years," she said.

Swastika refuses to get into the debate of nepotism. "If people say that it was easy for me to get into films, they are wrong. I worked in TV for a good four years before I got film offers. So, I was not a random face dropped with a glamorous debut! By the time I did my first film, I was known on TV," she says.