Actress Sushmita Sen faced a lot of judgement after she adopted her eldest daughter Renee when she was just 24. At that time she had just delivered a hit film - Biwi No 1 opposite Salman Khan. However, her unconventional decision led her manager to leave her. In a chat with NDTV, the Main Hoon Na star explained why her manager abandoned her. He was certain this decision (to become a mother) would severely harm her career prospects. “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),” she recalled. However, the actress refuse to be discouraged by this development. “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 revealed. Nevertheless, being a single mother and a working actress in the 90s was not a walk in the park, admitted the diva. She revealed she did face an “enormous amount of pushback,” from the industry. Being a single mother as an actress was more difficult back in the day as actors lacked the options they have nowadays with the rise of OTT. “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 reminisced. Sen eventually managed to silence her critics and bounced back with a vengeance. After becoming a mother to two girls, Sen appeared in the critically and commercially successful suspense thriller Aankhen (which also starred Akshay Kumar and Big B), and Meghna Gulzar’s directorial debut Filhaal in 2002. Her peak as an actress came a few years later with Farah Khan’s action drama Main Hoon Na (2004) which saw her opposite Shah Rukh Khan and David Dhawan directorial, the Salman Khan-starrer Maine Pyaar Kyu Kiya in 2005. She made her acting comeback after a hiatus through the crime thriller web series Aarya in 2020.