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How to break into Bollywood if you aren’t Priyanka Chopra: from bad roles to MeToo, inside the world’s largest film industry
- India is the world’s largest producer of films, but forging a career in the industry can be a challenge. Aspiring stars must beware its ‘casting couch’ culture
- One casting director for advertisements says the number of actors vying for roles, as a step to film work, has more than doubled since 2014
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It took a minute for Malhaar Rathod, then an aspiring teenage actress, to realise what the 65-year-old Indian film producer was asking her to do – and to make the decision to walk away.
“He claimed he had a part for me and then asked me to lift my top. I got so scared, I didn’t know what to do at first,” Rathod, now an up-and-coming television star, says in Mumbai.
Her experience with what is euphemistically known as Bollywood’s “casting couch” culture underlines the challenges facing anyone seeking to break into India’s massive, insiders-only film industry, where the #MeToo movement has secured few wins.
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After MeToo triggered the downfall of top Hollywood power brokers such as Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, many women in Bollywood spoke up about their experience of sexual harassment, breaking a long-established culture of silence.

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The Indian industry has largely looked the other way, however, and many of the alleged perpetrators have been able to revive their careers after lying low for a few months.
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