Vidya Balan has been the ubiquitous face of women-centric cinema ever since she delivered a big hit, The Dirty Picture way back in 2011, and followed it up with many other commercial successes, from No One Killed Jessica (2011) and Kahaani (2012) to Tumhari Slu (2017) and Mission Mangal (2019). The 41–year-old actress now returns with a biopic on Shakuntala Devi (1929-2013), known across the world as a human computer, which is releasing directly on Amazon Prime Video on July 31. In a candid conversation with Outlook’s Giridhar Jha, the National Award-winning actress talks about, among other things, her latest film, career, gender and pay disparity in Bollywood and, of course, how it feels to have been at the forefront of the revolution of women’s cinema in the past decade. Excerpts from the interview: