Make-up artist Vikram Gaikwad on transforming Lara Dutta as Indira Gandhi

Actor Akshay Kumar's film 'Bell Bottom' will hit theatres this week. Surprisingly, the film is creating a buzz not for its big star cast but actress Lara Dutta's character of late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
Vikram Gaikwad, the man behind Lara's make-up transformation, says that he studied Indira Gandhi's pictures thoroughly to get the look right.

"The result you see today is the outcome of a very thorough and thought through process. I read the script and then the casting and direction team informed us that Lara (Dutta) is going to perform as Indira Gandhi. Now if you compare Lara Dutta to Indira Gandhi there is literally no likeness between their faces," shares the National Award winning make-up artist.

Elaborating on what he worked on, he says: "To start with we researched several pictures and videos of Indira ji and compared them with Lara. Indira ji has three prominent features - eyebrows, nose and face cut along with hair style. If you see we have changed the shape and style of eyebrows to make them look more dominant. We have done prosthetics on nose...The wig was also worked out in details to carry the texture, style, colour and combination of grey hair and also wrinkles have been created along with a lot of shading work."

Vikram worked with his team and every day gave three hours to Lara and got her into the character.

"Around 2 to 3 trials were done before the shooting started. In the first trial we were able to hit a lot of closeness and then we moved to perfecting and refining it. Each make-up took three hours. The make-up like this cannot happen without the dedication, devotion, sincerity and cooperation of the artist. I really thank Lara and appreciate her for the same," says Vikram, who has earlier won National Awards for his work in 'Dirty Picture', 'Bal Gandharva', 'Moner Manush' and 'Jatishwar'.-IANS