Kangana says she once worked 'below her intelligence'. What changed?

Two decades after her film debut in Gangster, actor-MP Kangana Ranaut is feeling reflective.

Speaking to PTI while promoting her latest film Bharat Bhhagya Viddhaata, the actor recalled a difficult phase after the success of Fashion (2008) when, despite critical acclaim, meaningful work remained elusive. "I knew that I was working below my intelligence," she said of the period, adding that she took up projects because survival, not fulfilment, was the priority.

It is a striking quote. Not least because it invites a question Ranaut perhaps did not intend to raise.

If the years immediately after Fashion represented a period when she was not getting the opportunities she believed her talent deserved, what are audiences to make of the years since?

There was a time when Ranaut's confidence seemed fully justified. Between major box-office successes such as Fashion, Queen and the two Tanu Weds Manu films, she established herself as one of Hindi cinema's most distinctive performers. Her rise was built not on conventional glamour but a combination of unpredictability, vulnerability and screen presence that few contemporaries could match.

Yet the past decade has produced a curious disconnect between Ranaut's self-belief and her results.

A succession of ambitious projects have failed to revive the commercial and critical heights of her peak years. Dhaakad, the 2022 action thriller mounted on a reported budget of more than Rs 90 crore, ended its theatrical run with a worldwide gross of just around Rs 3.5 crore, making it one of the biggest commercial disasters in recent Hindi cinema.

Tejas fared little better. The 2023 aviation drama struggled from its opening weekend and eventually grossed only around Rs 8 crore worldwide, despite being promoted as a major patriotic action film.

Then came Emergency in 2025. Directed, produced and headlined by Ranaut, the film was perhaps her most personal and politically charged project. Yet it, too, failed to deliver the comeback many supporters had predicted, ending its run with a worldwide gross of roughly Rs 22 crore.

That, however, is only part of the story.

Since entering politics, Ranaut has demonstrated a remarkable ability to remain in the headlines, though not always for reasons likely to feature in a parliamentary report card.

In November 2021, long before she entered Parliament, she sparked a national controversy by suggesting that India received "real freedom" only in 2014 and describing Independence in 1947 as "bheekh (charity)". The remarks drew criticism across the political spectrum and established a pattern that would continue into her political career.

Then, in June 2024, just days after her election as BJP MP from Mandi, Ranaut found herself at the centre of another national controversy when she was slapped by a female CISF constable at Chandigarh airport. The constable cited Ranaut's past insulting comments on the 2020-21 farmers' movement, ensuring that what should have been a triumphant political arrival instead became another headline-grabbing controversy.

The following year, during devastating floods in Himachal Pradesh, Ranaut again drew criticism after telling reporters that she neither held a cabinet post nor controlled disaster-relief funds when questioned about relief efforts, apparently unaware of the funds at the disposal of an MP. Later, she attracted fresh attention by lamenting that her restaurant business had earned only Rs 50 in a single day because of disruptions caused by the floods, even as a woman who had lost her home was narrating her woes to the MP.

Most recently, while promoting Bharat Bhhagya Viddhaata, she has generated another debate by describing nursing as an "over-sexualised" profession and questioning why nurses continue to be depicted in skirts.

None of this is to suggest that Ranaut lacks talent. Quite the opposite. Few actors of her generation have delivered performances as memorable as those in Queen, Fashion or Tanu Weds Manu Returns.

What makes Ranaut unusual is the widening gap between the certainty with which she speaks and the measurable outcomes that follow. The actor who once challenged Bollywood's conventions now finds her films struggling to connect with audiences. The politician who entered Parliament as one of the BJP's most high-profile celebrity recruits often attracts more attention for her remarks — some of which even her party distances itself from — than for her legislative footprint.

Which brings us back to her observation that she once worked below her intelligence. Perhaps the irony is that the remark was intended as a reflection on the past. Instead, it has prompted renewed scrutiny of the present.