Actors are twisted people: Kangana Ranaut

Kangana Ranaut says the demand of playing challenging roles on screen often takes its toll on the actors, who walk the thin line between real and imaginary all the time.
The "Queen" star said at times it becomes tough for a performer after pack up to come out of the environment created during the filming.
"Physically it is very demanding as an actor and I don't want to put a lot of focus on that but I think it is emotionally and mentally a lot more...
"It can completely twist you... We abandon ourselves for days and months and by the end of it we are twisted people which you make fun of. You (actors) are a combination of so many imaginary and real things, you don't know who you are," Kangana said while addressing a session with Kareena Kapoor Khan and moderated by Imtiaz Ali at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Giving the example of her last role in "Katti Batti" where she played a cancer patient, Kangana said it is hard to switch back to reality immediately after undergoing those emotions as part of the character.
"I don't feel sick or like a dying person but for half a day I actually die as a person... And then when everyone says pack up, you are left feeling so empty and cheated while sitting in your own car because other people have gone home and you just can't get out of the frame of mind of that person who has just died or had millions of experiences."

Kangana, 28, who started her Bollywood journey playing dark characters, said they left her feeling melancholy at a very young age.

"When I did these psychological characters like the drug addicts, the ones who were rejected and dejected, I started to feel a sort of melancholia which was very unnatural for me to have at a teenage. Then I avoided those characters," she said.
The National-award winning actress said she does not find the shooting experiences pleasant.
"Shootings are not very pleasant experiences. You are always creating things that aren't real. You are cramped up in a small boxy room with 50-70 people, sweating, smelling or it's too cold. Very rarely we get circumstances which are favourable..."

Asked what scares her when she is shooting, the actress said, "I dread shooting with animals. I hope I never get a script with snakes."
But in her upcoming outing "Rangoon", directed by Vishal Bhardwaj and starring Saif Ali Khan along with Shahid Kapoor, Kangana would be seen dealing with leeches.
"There are leeches in the film. I asked Vishal, while reading the script, whether they are the real ones and he told me that they are not real. They are VFX.