Lakshmi Manchu, who is the daughter of veteran actor Mohan Babu, has worked as a child actor in Indian cinema before taking up acting roles in Hollywood. Lakshmi has moved to Mumbai from Hyderabad after working in several South films–including Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam. In an interview with the indianexpress.
com, the actress listed the difference between Hollywood and Indian cinema, pointing out how there are just too many ‘unnecessary people’ on set. “Kyu chahiye itne log (Why do we need so many people),” asked the actor. Stars and their entourages have been an active topic of discussion in the Hindi film industry, inflating budgets at a time when Bollywood is going through a lean phase.
Talking about the difference she noticed between Hollywood and Indian cinema as an actor, Lakshmi said, “In Indian cinema, Tamil is different from Telugu and Telugu is different from Hindi and so on. Each culture has its own nuisances and as an actor it is up to you to (deal with them). In America, less is more.
I was really able to bring that to India, so if they give me four pages of dialogue, I am like ‘how can I say this with one page and accentuate with my performance or how I act or how I behave.’ There is a lot of difference, but that’s the beauty of playing these different parts.” Talking about the culture difference in Hollywood and Indian cinema, Manchu said, “I come from a family of actors.
I am used to the Indian sets rather than American. People there us.
