How Lihaaf actress Namita Lal left a 20-year banking career for acting!

A successful career in banking and a luxurious life in Singapore was what Namita Lal decided to part with when she decided to follow her passion of becoming an actress. Namita has been part of critically acclaimed films and theatre and says that it was very early in life when she was bitten by the acting bug.

“I have been a career banker for almost 20+ years. I worked in Standard Chartered bank after I finished my MBA and worked in many countries like India, London, Africa, the Middle East, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand. When I quit, I was the managing director of a big global business, running all of the corporate banking business verticals in 2019. I’m from Lucknow and Delhi. I have studied in many schools across Dehradun, Bareilly, Moradabad and finally ended up at St. Stephens where I got a bachelor’s degree in History. Then I did an MBA from the Institute of Rural Management Anand (IRMA) Gujarat,” she says.

“I used to always be on stage in school and I enjoyed it thoroughly. But St. Stephens in Delhi had a big theatre culture and I was part of the Shakespeare Hindi and English society. I did a play at Kamani auditorium which was a part of Hindi society called Badi Buaji. I was the lead. It was directed by Veerendra Saxena and just loved doing that. It was my first year of college and I realised that I love the camera. The process, the direction by Viru Dada, the friendships that developed across, it was a memorable part of my life”, she adds.

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This was when she realised that she was born to act. “I think it was at that time that I thought that I was going to be an actress. But I wanted to concentrate on my studies first and build a career and then wanted to move on to follow my passion,” she says.

Her next tryst with acting was a few years later. “In 2015, a playwriter in Singapore, Sangeeta Nambiar wrote a play called Another Ticket to Bollywood. And she wrote a role for me because I was very vocal about my passion for drama, though I hadn’t done it for all of the years that I have worked in Standard Chartered bank. This was my first break into theatre again after that many years. It was a tough role. It was a role of a 70-year-old Biji who speaks English in a Punjabi accent. And on stage, I was dressed in a white saree and dark glasses because she is partially blind and she is just chanting and singing a song and that was my first break back again. I got great reviews,” she says.

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As an actress, she loved playing parts that were so alien to how she was in real life. “People really didn’t know me as a theatre actor and I loved the fact that nobody recognised me! I realised that I had a passion for playing characters who are so different from what I’m in my real life. And after that, I auditioned for many plays. I took part in many as well, including some really good ones like A Dance of the Birds where I had a south Indian accent. It was beautifully written and directed by Gauri Gupta. And I did Lihaaf on stage because of which I got an acting offer in India for the film which was being made. Kashmiri director Rahat Kazmi got copyrights from Ismat Chugtai’s (novelist) family. And he knew the director of the play that was being done in Singapore and we got in touch. That was how I landed in my first feature film,” says the actress who has also produced Lihaaf and has also been part of other films such as Wishlist and Oxygen.

Talking about her future plans, she says, “Now I have relocated to Mumbai from Singapore and my plans are to invest myself in the world of cinema and theatre, direction, writing, and acting primarily. I do want to audition for strong female roles in web series commercial cinema, independent cinema and short films. I am passionate about writing as well and I enjoy the process of directing. But primarily, I want to focus on my journey as an actor in the next two years.”