This template evolved. In Band Baaja Baaraat (2010), she played Shruti Kakkar, a Delhi girl obsessed with shaadi planning but utterly allergic to romance itself. Her relationship with Bittoo (Ranveer Singh) begins as a cold, profit-driven “ass contract”—they are business partners who agree to a no-sex, no-feelings policy. When the contract breaks, the film doesn’t punish her for wanting independence; it shows that their eventual romance works precisely because it was built on mutual ambition, not sentimentality. Sharma’s most daring performances reject the idea that romantic tension must be the central engine of the plot. In NH10 (2015), which she also produced, her character Meera is a young urban professional whose husband’s murder triggers a savage road-revenge thriller. Romance is not the solution; it is the inciting tragedy. The film spends zero time on flashback love scenes. Meera’s journey is about survival, rage, and agency—her husband’s memory is a burden, not a balm.

In the pantheon of Bollywood heroines, the role of “The Girl” has historically been a thankless one. She is the goalpost, the moral compass, or the trophy. Her existence is almost always defined by her relationship to the male protagonist—she is there to be won, rescued, or serenaded. For decades, the Hindi film industry thrived on the assumption that a female lead’s deepest, most dramatic arc would inevitably lead to a man’s arms.

And then came Anushka Sharma.

Similarly, in Pari (2018), a horror film, the male lead (Parambrata Chatterjee) is essentially a sidekick to Sharma’s tormented, feral Ruksana. There is a tender affection between them, but it is maternal and protective, not erotic. She is not seeking a lover; she is seeking a witness. The film subverts the horror trope of the “final girl” who needs a man to kill the monster. Here, she is the monster, and the man merely holds her hand as she burns.

Her romantic storylines are not about the pursuit of love. They are about the negotiation of power, convenience, and survival. Anushka Sharma’s great contribution to Hindi cinema is this: she proved that a woman can be the hero of her own story even if the love interest is just a supporting character—or entirely absent. In an industry drunk on romance, she dared to ask: “What if she doesn’t need him?”

In the romantic comedy Jab Harry Met Sejal (2017), she played the titular Sejal—a woman who drags a depressed tour guide (Shah Rukh Khan) across Europe to find her lost engagement ring. The twist? She doesn’t want the ring for sentimental value; she wants it to return to her boring fiancé. The entire film is a fake romance. Harry falls for her; Sejal remains pragmatic, even cold. When Harry finally confesses his love, Sejal’s reply is a shrug: “I told you, I’m engaged.” It was a shocking moment of “ass relationship” realism: sometimes, the woman is just not that into you, and the film refuses to punish her for it. Critics often call Anushka Sharma an underrated actor, but that misses the point. She is not underrated; she is uncomfortable . In an industry that profits from selling female vulnerability as a virtue, Sharma’s heroines are functional adults. They have sex without strings ( Band Baaja Baaraat ), they prioritize careers over crushes ( Sui Dhaaga ), they get angry and violent ( NH10 ), and they walk away from “happily ever after” without a second glance ( Phillauri ).

With a career spanning from Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi (2008) to Zero (2018) and her prolific production work after, Sharma quietly engineered a revolution not by screaming for equality, but by playing characters who treated romantic storylines as an accessory , not a necessity. She built a filmography of what might be called “Ass relationships”—a term referring to relationships that are functional, transactional, or grounded in equal-footing partnership rather than breathless idealism. In doing so, she dismantled Bollywood’s most sacred cow: the illusion that a woman’s story is incomplete without a man to complete it. When Anushka debuted opposite Shah Rukh Khan in Rab Ne... , her character Taani was a woman forced into marriage by a dying father’s wish. The film’s central irony is that while the hero (Suri) is desperate to win her love, Taani spends most of the film emotionally unavailable, grieving, and entirely uninterested in a fairy tale. She is polite, dutiful, but never needy. Her emotional climax is not “falling in love” but choosing to respect a bond built on patience. It was a radical debut: a heroine who didn’t need the hero’s love to feel whole.

The answer, as her filmography shows, is a far more interesting movie.