When asked if while looking back she feels filmmakers have not tapped her full potential, Tabu told PTI, "Absolutely. I don't think I've tapped my full potential, forget the filmmakers...I think a very minuscule part of my potential has been tapped."
The 44-year-old actress, who has won two National Awards for her roles in "Maachis" (1996) and the 2001 drama "Chandni "Bar", says she feels like this because she has a different understating of herself today.
"I feel that may be it's not true. May be I feel that now when you have a different understanding of your own potential, of yourself. I feel I could've done things in so many different ways," she said.
Following her award-winning stint in "Chandni Bar", Tabu then acted in "Maqbool" made by filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj's, who she believes "allowed" her to try different things as an actress.
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The "Cheeni Kum" actress, who worked with Bhardwaj again
in "Haider", says an actor looks at himself the way a director visualises him.
"Vishal sees in me something which not everybody else is able to. Just to get that from a director that 'Oh my God he is visualising me like this', it makes your work different. You look at yourself the way a director looks at you. That gives you the basis for your performance," she said.
The actress has been part of several book adaptations, from "Maqbool" and "Haider" - based on William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" and "Hamlet" respectively, to "Life of Pi" (based on a book of the same name by Yann Martel) and "The Namesake", based on a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri.
"I don't know why all book adaptations come to me. I must become the poster girl for adaptations of books," she said.
"Because I have not made my own thing about them, I go by the script and whatever brief my director or writer gives me about the character," she added.