Imagine being told by your idol that you have zero chance of making it, just because you’re too tall. That’s exactly what happened to Pooja Batra, the stunning actress who lit up films like ‘Virasat’, ‘Jodi No. 1’, and ‘Nayak: The Real Hero’ in the late 90s and 2000s.
In a chat with Harper’s Bazaar India, Batra finally opened up about something fans always wondered; why didn’t we see her in more films? Turns out, the answer is surprisingly simple and honestly quite unfair: the men she worked with didn’t want to look short standing next to her.
“You don’t have a chance”: Sangeeta Bijlani’s blunt words
The first blow came from someone Batra genuinely adored. Veteran actress and model Sangeeta Bijlani, who debuted in ‘Qatil’ (1988) opposite Aditya Pancholi and worked in Bollywood for eight years before her final film ‘Nirbhay’ (1996) with Mithun Chakraborty, looked Batra dead in the eye and told her she was simply too tall for Bollywood.
“She’s my idol. She’s beautiful, and she’s a model too,” Batra said warmly, before revealing the sting of those words. “I was told by Sangeeta Bijlani, ‘You don’t have a chance in the movies because you’re too tall.'”
The bizarre on-set tricks
Here’s where things get genuinely wild. To keep her male co-stars looking suitably tall and heroic on screen, Batra had to physically shrink herself, literally.
She would perform what she called “half-splits” during close-up shots, bending her legs just enough so the hero beside her appeared taller in the frame. In her very first Hindi film, Priyadarshan’s 1997 debut ‘Virasat’, she wore carefully colour-coordinated outfits specifically chosen to make her look shorter on camera.
And it didn’t stop there. Batra often turned up on set wearing her own clothes because she had developed clever personal styling tricks to dress in ways that minimised her height.
Directors, apparently impressed, would sometimes just wave their hands and say, “Let her wear what she’s wearing.” They also asked her to skip heavy makeup for a more natural look, which she mostly agreed to, though she did draw one firm line. “I was like, at least sunblock toh lagane do,” she laughed.
Lost roles, lost opportunities
Despite putting her heart into every single performance, the height problem followed Batra like a shadow throughout her career. Male stars felt genuinely uncomfortable when she stood beside them, worrying the camera would expose the height difference and somehow damage their image.
“I gave every role my best, even though the heroes got intimidated because of my stature. It’s true I didn’t book a lot of movies because of my height. I lost out on a lot of good roles,” she said.
The one hero who never made it weird
Among all her co-stars, exactly one man stood tall (no pun intended) in Batra’s memory. Salman Khan, whom she starred alongside in the 2000 romantic comedy ‘Kahin Pyaar Na Ho Jaaye’, directed by K Murali Mohana Rao, never once made her height an issue.
“Salman never had a problem. He was one guy who’d be like, ‘Wear your heels, I don’t have a problem.’ He’d be confident in his own skin,” she recalled.