How Lata Mangeshkar Entered Films. Remembering Her Acting Roles And More
NDTV
"I started out as an actress. But I never used to like acting," Lata Mangeshkar told NDTV in 2008
Before she ruled the Indian music circuit, Lata Mangeshkar started her career in the film industry as an actor playing smaller parts to support her family after her father's death. Lata Mangeshkar was named Hema at her birth but her parents had later renamed her as Lata after a female character named Latika, from her father, Deenanath Mangeshkar's play Bhaaw Bandhan. Not many people know that at the age of five, the singing legend had started to work as an actress in her father's musical plays in Marathi language.
In his Hindi biography on Lata Mangeshkar, writer Yatindra Mishra recalls the singer's debut on stage.
"Father Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar's drama company Balwant Sangeet Mandali staged a play -Soubhadra, based on the story of Arjun and Subhadra. Pandit Deenanath played the role of Arjun while nine-year-old Lata played Narad," he wrote in Lata: Sur Gatha.
Before the start of the play, the young Lata told her father that she would get 'once more' from the audience like he always did. And Lata delivered on her promise. She later played Krishna in her father's production of Gurukul.
