The Ghajni fame actor Asin left bollywood in 2015 even after being quite a successful actor. But why? Asin Thottumkal was born on 26 October, 1985 in Kochin, Kerala and started working at a very young age of 15. Her debut was with the Malayalam comedy-drama ‘Narendran Makan Jayakanthan Vaka’ in the year 2001 and by 2003, she even made her debut in the Telugu film industry.
Then in 2005, a Tamil movie named ‘Ghajni‘ was made in which Asin along with Pradeep Ram Singh Rawat were in the cast, and this commercially successful film became the 3rd highest grossing Tamil film of that year. Then in 2008, when the Bollywood Ghajini was being made, the makers thought of taking actors Asin and Pradeep Ram Singh Rawat as Kalpana Shetty and Gajini Dharmatm respectively.
After delivering a blockbuster movie which collected over 200 crores at that time, Asin’s fan following in Bollywood had already reached the level of a well established actor. In 2009 she went on to do another film named ‘London Dreams’ opposite Salman Khan. Till 2011, Asin was so successful in her career, that articles like “Deepika Out, Asin In” had started getting published, wherein things like- ‘Asin easily replacing Deepika Padukone in Housefull 2’ would be written, considering that Deepika, right now, is one of the most renowned actors in Bollywood.
But what caused the major downfall in her career? It all started when the shooting of Salman Khan starrer ‘Ready (2011)’ was going on in 2010. What happened was that it was the IIFA awards’ 11th year and they decided to conduct the award function in Sri Lanka, and during that time Sri Lanka’s relations with our country were not good, especially with the Tamil speaking crowd. It went to an extent where they accused Sri Lanka of Human Rights Violation and the South Indian Artistes Association (SIAA) raised their voice to the issue. The south association even went against IIFA because they were hosting their award function in Sri Lanka and stated that whoever Indian celebrity would go attend the event, would be banned from the South industry.
All the celebrities including Amitabh Bachchan, who was the brand ambassador of IIFA at that time, cancelled going to the event, but when Salman Khan was offered to replace Bachchan in the show, he accepted it. In that year itself, the south industry declared that they would ban Salman Khan and wouldn’t even let his films go on their screens. Then what happened which made the situation worse was that the shooting of ‘Ready’ was going on and Salman Khan changed its shoot location at the very last minute to Sri Lanka, and as Asin was in the main lead, she had no option but to go there as well. This caused such a backlash in Asin’s career that a Tamil film of hers which was released in 2011, named Kaavalan, happened to be her last one in the Tamil industry.
But fortunately, ‘Ready’ worked very well at the box office, then ‘Housefull 2’, ‘Bol Bachchan’ and ‘Khiladi 786’, all were massive hits and even superhits of that time, which means that Asin’s career in Bollywood was getting boosted, but from the south, she wasn’t getting any offers.
At last, she met her husband for the first time with Akshay Kumar when they were going to Bangladesh for Housefull 2’s promotions. There they introduced themselves and eventually fell in love and got married on 19 January 2016. Her last film in Bollywood was ‘All is Well (2015)’ opposite Abhishek Bachchan, and then she quit the industry by her own choice. Till now, she hasn’t been seen in any movie, but her fans from both bollywood and south love seeing her work even today. As of now, she happily lives with her husband Rahul Sharma and daughter Arin.
