Bollywood star Manisha Koirala on having it all, hitting rock bottom and surviving stage-four ovarian cancer
- Born into a prominent political family in Nepal, the actress has seen her fair share of ups and downs
- She reveals how alcohol and toxic relationships caused her life to spiral out of control, until cancer changed everything
“Money, name, fame and a string of hits – I had it all. I had friends whom I could party with at any time and awards that were coveted by many. It was a life only the chosen few get to live. But even though the world was at my feet, something strange began happening to me. I soon started feeling the misery of existence. I became wretched.”
Although those words are hers, Bollywood actor Manisha Koirala does not appear wretched today, but polished, professional and self-assured.
On a high floor of Hong Kong’s Island Shangri-La hotel, clad in a business-like, dove-grey trouser suit and with two assistants flitting hither and yon to tweak her hair and make-up, she appears implicitly in control while posing for Post Magazine’s photographer.
“Just an inch or two to the left, please … Now look just above my head … And directly into the lens …” Koirala seems to react to the snapper’s requests before the words have even left his lips, and sometimes she pre-empts his instructions. As one of Bollywood’s most successful female actors in recent decades, the 48-year-old Nepali has, after all, done this hundreds of times before.
Koirala is in Hong Kong to take part in the fifth edition of Hong Kong’s India by the Bay festival – a calendar of events over nine days celebrating the South Asian country’s rich cultural heritage through music, dance, film, food, theatre, yoga, literature and art, and which wraps up on March 9.
Peering down from our lofty perch in the Shangri-La, one can just make out the Asia Society Hong Kong Centre, on Admiralty’s Justice Drive. Later in the day, the venue will host an India by the Bay gathering titled “In conversation with Manisha Koirala”. During that session, the veteran of more than 80 feature films will shine a light on how she became one of the most versatile, in-demand and highest-paid female Bollywood actors of the 1990s.
