Anjana Sukhani: I did workshops to keep the actor in me, alive

Anjana Sukhani is gearing up to start the second innings of her career with Akshay Kumar-Kareena Kapoor Khan’s

Good Newwz

. The actress, who recently opened up about her battle with depression, feels the dramedy is the best way to kick off the next innings in her career. She says, “Today, I would like to take a path that leads me to a good role. It doesn’t matter if the story centres on me or someone else. I know where I am headed and where I want to get. As actors, the acknowledgement that we want comes from doing a role with conviction.”

Anjana plays a lawyer and Akshay’s sister in Raj Mehta’s Good Newwz. When asked to elaborate on her part in the Christmas release, she said, “I’m playing an important role where my character underlines the legal implications of the sperm mix-up between the couples. My character Richa advises her brother and bhabhi about what they should do in the given situation. It’s a small but crucial role because it’s important for the audience to understand that there can be serious legal repercussions of goof-ups like this.”

For the last couple of years, Anjana had kept herself away from the spotlight, for personal reasons. While she tended to her ailing aunt, she also battled depression. When we brought it up, she said, “There can’t be any guilt or shame attached to what I went through. I asked for professional help and there’s no share if one went through a tough phase. We change the wiring of our lives everyday irrespective of what we feel on that day to suit the need of the hour. These things can gradually erode you emotionally and make you feel very vulnerable. Accepting what you’re going through and holding your head high are very important.”

She further added, “Depression is not necessarily a condition where you are curled up and sitting in a corner. That probably happens in extreme cases. In that phase, I did workshops to keep the actor in me, alive. That helped me to tide through the bad batch with a smile. In that phase, I had experienced so much pain in so many forms that it changed me as a person and also made me a better artiste.”