Khauff and Crew actor Chaitali Kohli says acting healed her deepest insecurities

Born and raised in Dadar, Chaitali Kohli always felt drawn to acting, despite studying advertising and public relations and teaching belly dancing for 12 years. Her journey began early. “I went for one workshop of Vidya Patwardhan, and since then I have never thought of anything else but acting. I was six back then. But because of my parents, I could never take up acting full time. It wasn’t a career for them. They told me to get married, have kids, and then do what I want, and that's exactly what I did. In 2017 I went to Adishakti to physically learn more about natyashastra, and that set my beginning,” she said.

Over the years, her relationship with her body and voice changed. “As compared to the initial days of acting, my hesitation about my looks, my body, and my voice went away in the past few years. I enjoy being me in my body, and your body is all you have when you are an actor. My acting has healed the hurt fat girl in me,” she added.

Chaitali’s first break came with PhonePe’s Seema Aunty, featuring Aamir Khan’s voiceover. She also worked in the Marathi play Vishamrut, directed by Vijay Kenkare, and her last Hindi project was Single Papa. On working across languages, she said, “I know both the languages well. And since I am trained I know how both languages sound without accent. I have a knack to speak the language as it is. Just a quirk I learnt!”

On her long-term goal, Chaitali added, “My career goal is to be so busy in my work that I am able to build a great body of work and make an impact on the audience so that they remember me as one of the fine actors from India.”


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