Sushmita Sen adopted her elder daughter Renee Sen just four years after making her Hindi film debut with Mahesh Bhatt’s 1996 psychological thriller Dastak. At the time, she’d just delivered a hit in David Dhawan’s comedy Biwi No 1 opposite Salman Khan in 1999, and at 24, she decided to be a single mother. In a new interview, Sushmita shared that after she decided to adopt, her manager left her as he said that she wasn’t serious about her career.‘Can’t represent someone who’s a mother at 24’“My manager ran away. He said, ‘You’re not serious about your career, and I can’t represent someone who’s a mother at 24. Character roles bhi nahi milenge aapko (You wouldn’t even get character roles),'” Sushmita recalled in a chat with NDTV. “He ran away, and I was like, good riddance to bad rubbish. I was quite okay with it. And you won’t believe it – after I became a mother, I gave my biggest hits,” she added.She could subsequently see that her manager wasn’t entirely wrong because she did get an “enormous amount of pushback” from the industry. “They were like, ‘What is she doing? She’s not committed, as it is,'” Sushmita recalled getting cornered after becoming a mother. It didn’t help that she wasn’t a trained actor.Sushmita was told that she was “a difficult heroine to cast because she’s taller than most actors”, echoing concerns of fellow tall female actors like Sangeeta Bijlani and Pooja Batra. She also defended why she wasn’t a great actor as she was learning on the job, having been picked to act a couple of years after she was crowned Miss Universe in 1994. “I needed someone to help me learn, and I was thrown into doing the job, so I did the best I could. And then I learned on the job,” added Sushmita.How being a single mom affected her careerLast year, there was a lot of debate around Deepika Padukone walking out of two tentpoles — Sandeep Reddy Vanga’s Spirit and the sequel to Nag Ashwin’s 2024 hit dystopian sci-fi epic Kalki 2898 AD — because the makers couldn’t incorporate her special personal demands after becoming a mother to daughter Dua the year before. Her requests, including an eight-hour work shift, was dismissed, leading her to make her way out.But Sushmita insists that working in the film industry for young mothers was much “worse” back in the early 2000s owing to lack of avenues. “You’re talking about a world without social media, without the digital boom, and there are far fewer platforms for an actor to work in today. And it’s still tough. So imagine if you are an actor who only does one platform. And there are rules attached to that platform, which is cinema, that a girl has to forget having a baby. You’re not getting married because that impacts your fan following and audience,” she explained. Sushmita Sen with Shah Rukh Khan in Main Hoon Na (2004). (Photo Express Archive)‘I didn’t have godfathers’Being a “self-made woman”, Sushmita chose to not follow the industry’s rules, but instead opted to follow her own. “I didn’t have godfathers. Nobody gave me a platform. I did everything on my own. So, your rules don’t apply to me. My rules apply to me. So my rule says, this is what I want to do. I want to be a young mother. And I do not want to be incapacitated in any way so as to be able to look after this child and give this child the best childhood possible. And so that was the time, and it worked out, thankfully. It took a lot, but it did work out,” she recalled.Story continues below this adA word of advice from her mother also helped. “My mum says this, that if you hold on to rejection long enough, acceptance follows. So I held on to that rejection long enough, and suddenly, it became a wonderful thing. And so, there was acceptance, and then life took me from there,” added the actor. Sushmita Sen with daughters Renee and Alisah.Two years after becoming a mother, Sushmita bounced back with her critically acclaimed turns in Vipul Shah’s heist thriller Aankhen and Meghna Gulzar’s directorial debut Filhaal… in 2002. She followed it up with a solo lead role in Robbie Grewal’s 2003 thriller Samay: When Time Strikes and Saurab Usha Narang’s 2004 horror movie Vaastu Shastra. But her biggest hits came only after a brief lull of four years, with Farah Khan’s 2004 directorial debut Main Hoon Na opposite Shah Rukh Khan and David Dhawan’s 2005 comedy Maine Pyaar Kyun Kiya? opposite Salman Khan. Even when her film career derailed, Sushmita made a memorable return on streaming with Ram Madhvani’s crime thriller show Aarya on Jio Hotstar in 2020.Also Read: Ranveer Singh banned by film body over Don 3 exit, Farhan Akhtar seeks Rs 45 cr in damagesSushmita went on to adopt her second daughter, Alisah, in 2010. Her elder daughter Renee is also following in her mother’s footsteps, as she made her acting debut in the 2020 short film Suttabaazi.