Udaari famed actress Hina Altaf recently appeared on popular talk show Speak your heart with Samina Peerzada where she bravely opened up about a traumatic experience of sexual abuse during childhood, her mother’s mental illness and her own struggle with depression.
“It was a tough character. A lot of people think it was all about delivering the dialogues and crying but it was much more than that,” she said when talking about her Udaari character – a victim of childhood sexual abuse. “I think in our society every 5th girl has gone through that kind of torture,” she added, before taking a short pause. “When I was doing my court scene for Udaari – where I had to talk about all that my character had been through – it was something that was familiar to me. The emotions I went through…you can say that I am familiar with how a girl feels when she goes through something like that,” she said.
Hina also disclosed that her mother, who is a patient of schizophrenia, used to beat her up. “Ever since I was born, my mother has been mentally disturbed… she went through certain things due to which she lost her balance in life. There’s a disease called schizophrenia and my mother has gone through it. There were times when my mom used to think when I left home for work I wasn’t actually going to the shoot but somewhere else. When I got back, she would beat me up, a lot. There have been instances where my face would be bleeding afterwards and when I went on set the makeup team would ask what had happened and I had nothing to say.”
When asked how she handled this, Hina responded, “I was going through extreme stress and extreme depression; I couldn’t sleep at night thinking someone would walk into the room or something would happen. I would wake up at 4 or 5 am due to fear.”
She then went on to reveal that how a certain Dr Alam – whose name she has now got tattooed on her wrist – helped her through this dark phase in her life. You can watch the full episode here to learn more about Hina’s incredible journey:
