Anushka Sharma has been a trailblazer in the contemporary Hindi film industry. A proud army brat born in Ayodhya and raised in Bangalore, she started her career as a model before making her acting debut opposite Shah Rukh Khan in the 2008 film Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi.
She went on to star in a variety of films across genres before taking a hiatus from acting in 2028. However, Anushka wears many hats on her head. She co-founded the production company Clean Slate Filmz, designed her own line of women’s clothing, and has been a philanthropist and a champion of gender equality and animal rights.
Married to cricketer Virat Kohli, Anushka celebrates her birthday every year on May 1. Commemorating the occasion, today’s quote of the day is an excerpt from a 2017 interview with Open magazine, where she stated:
“I’ve always presented myself exactly as who I am because I don’t want people to think that there is a right way of being this perfect person, who is not real. It’s really okay to be the way you are.”
What does Anushka Sharma’s quote mean?
Anushka’s quote highlights the importance of being authentic and having the courage to present oneself as one truly is to the world. To err is to be human, and everyone, from celebrities to the commonest of people imaginable, has flaws and makes mistakes.
Perfection is an idea that we all strive for, but that does not mean that an individual needs to reject their true self. Anushka accepts earlier in the statement that she is aware of her flaws and knows that she has made mistakes in life. However, she has also made the effort of owning up to those mistakes.
Accepting oneself for who they are allows individuals to accept others for who they are as well. It stops people from putting themselves or others either on pedestals or into a pit of disdain. As Anushka states, the perfect person is not real; it is thus important that we accept ourselves as who we are with all our glories and disgrace.
Why is Anushka Sharma’s quote relevant today?
In a world where people are more obsessed with their image than they are with themselves, the importance of authenticity cannot be overstated. The significance of Anushka’s quote is on two levels.
First, it reminds us all that we are humans, with skills and with flaws, and we should accept ourselves for who we are, and present ourselves unabashedly as such to the world. Second, it tells us that the people we look up to are humans as well. The ideas that we have of perfect human beings are just ideas. There is no flawless Übermensch in reality, and the sooner we can come to terms with it, the better we make sense of the world around us.