Alia Bhatt used to think 'once a fat kid, always a fat kid': 'No matter how much weight I lost, I...'

Alia Bhatt

Alia Bhatt, who made her debut in Karan Johar's Student of the Year in 2012, has since become one of Bollywood's top actresses, known for her brilliant acting chops. However, despite her confident public image, Bhatt recently opened up in an interview about her ongoing struggles with body image issues.

Alia Bhatt on battling body image issues in Bollywood

Alia Bhatt openly admitted that even after losing a lot of weight, she still dealt with self-doubt and wasn't completely happy with herself. In an interview with Allure, she talked about how, growing up, she faced strict beauty expectations in the Indian film industry, which often favored women who were tall, fair-skinned, and slim. She remembers, "I was quite a chubby, healthy kind of kid, very happy with my life at the time. I didn't think there was anything wrong with the way I looked," she said.

But when she entered the film industry, the way she saw herself started to shift. She dealt with body image struggles and often felt pressured to keep losing weight, "I have struggled with body-image issues since then. No matter how much weight I lost, I always struggled," she admitted.

Her friends would often tell her to stop worrying about dieting and just enjoy life, but Alia couldn't get rid of the feeling that she had to meet the industry's expectations, "My friends would say, ‘Alia, you need to stop dieting. Just be calm, live a little, eat some food.' And I used to be like, ‘Once a fat kid, always a fat kid'."

Alia Bhatt on Aishwarya Rai Bachchan being her inspiration

In the same interview, Alia opened up about who she watches before any performance. "When it comes to learning or being inspired by someone who has embodied dance in the most beautiful way on screen, I can't help but think of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan. She was absolutely, and still is, just mesmerizing. (She) also gave me a lot of direction and intellect. Whenever I had a song, I'd go to YouTube, type ‘Aishwarya Rai songs,' and it'd come, and I'd be looking at all her songs just to catch the expressions and just the way she moves from one move to another, the ease, the way she just lets herself be, but at the same time, it's just so perfect and so precise. And she's beautiful to look at," Alia said.