Noted South Indian actor Kamal Haasan is a polyglot. He is proficient in Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Telugu, Kannada, French and surprisingly, Bengali.
According to the actor's daughter Shruti Haasan, while her father had acted in multiple languages, he did not learn some of these languages because he had to do films in them.
During a YouTube interaction with Sathyaraj, she revealed why her father learnt Bengali.
According to her, Kamal Haasan learnt Bengali because of his fondness for Bengali director, screenwriter and actress Aparna Sen.
"Do you know why he (Kamal Haasan) learnt Bengali? Because at that time, he was in love with Aparna Sen, and to impress her, he learnt Bengali. He did not learn the language for films," Shruti Haasan told her Coole co-star.
She further revealed that her father named the character of Rani Mukerji in the film Hey Ram after Aparna Sen. The film is written, directed, and produced by Kamal Haasan, and Rani Mukerji plays Aparna Ram in the movie. Hey Ram is an alternate history fiction set around India's Partition, Direct Action Day, and the assassination of M.K. Gandhi by Nathuram Godse.
Aparna Sen made her acting debut at age 16 in Satyajit Ray’s Teen Kanya and later established herself as an acclaimed director with films like 36 Chowringhee Lane and Mr. and Mrs. Iyer.