The Marathi industry hasn't really accepted me, says Anjali Patil

Anjali Patil has made a mark for herself in the Hindi industry with films like Finding Fanny, Chakravyuh, Mere Pyare Prime Minister and Newton. The actress, an alumnus of SPPU’s Lalit Kala Kendra, has done Marathi films as well, the most recent being Mann Fakira. However, Anjali isn’t a frequent feature in Marathi films and she feels the reason is that the industry hasn’t accepted her yet.
Ask her why she feels so and she says, “I don’t know why.Maybe I am not out there as much as I should be. There are Marathi directors who I would like to work with, but I see them working with the same set of actors again and again. Then I think why to break their well-formed group.”
By her admission, Anjali leads an unconventional lifestyle. “I am a hippie, nomad, who does acting on the side,” laughs Anjali, who travels a lot whenever she can. Is that a reason we see less of her on the big screen then? “I am not a person who likes to go and seek work. I don’t stay in Mumbai, don’t have a circle of friends from the industry and have totally different things to do in life. So, networking for work is not something I see myself doing, but I am happy the way I function. Some people try to make me feel bad about it by saying how I am losing work and all, but they haven’t succeeded in it,” says the Nashik girl, who won accolades for her performance in the Marathi film The Silence.
Though she’s had acclaimed films in her filmography, Anjali shares that one good film doesn’t guarantee a queue of offers. She says that she functions in a certain way and due to the life she leads, there’s no other option. “Some directors want to work with me and they approach me for films. In the film industry, we are in the business of pretending. We say ‘I have so much work and scripts and offers', but I have no qualms in saying that I am happy to work with only a few people who want to work with me,” she says.
Since she has been part of many independent films, a question Anjali gets asked often is whether she doesn’t want to do commercial films at all. To this, the actress replies, “Recently, I said no to a few commercial films and agreed to do three indie films. So everyone was like ‘Oh, so will you never do commercial films?', but it's not like that. I do the films I do because I like the scripts. When I did Kaala, people asked, ‘What happened to your indie ethics now?'. It doesn’t work that way.” Then how does it work? “My decisions are based on what I am as a person at a specific point of time. I might agree to do a brain-dead comedy if I feel like taking up a challenge. Or I won’t. It entirely depends on where I am and what my thought process is at that time,” she explains.
While her carefree and opinionated turn as Mahi in Mann Fakira was widely appreciated by the Marathi audience, Anjali isn’t doing any Marathi film immediately. She is, however, doing two Hindi films. “One of them is with Nawazuddin Siddiqui and the other one is with Shrinivas Pokale, the kid from Naal. I loved Shrinivas in Naal and that was the reason I said yes to the other film,” she says