Vivek Oberoi feels women keen to empower themselves and be successful should take inspiration from actress Vidya Balan, who has set an example for others with her journey. Vidya’s career graph has been interesting – after making an impressive Bollywood debut with period love story ‘Parineeta’ in 2005, she made an unsuccessful transition to glamorous roles with ‘Heyy Babyy’ and ‘Kismat Konnection’. She was declared down and out.

But Vidya bounced back with 2009 film ‘Paa’ and after there was no looking back for her as she etched out variety of roles on the big screen in ‘Ishqiya’, ‘No One Killed Jessica’, ‘The Dirty Picture’ (2011) and ‘Kahaani’ (2012) with aplomb. All these films were commercially successful and critically acclaimed.

“Have you heard of Vidya Balan? She is the answer. She is such a phenomenon. She chose that path and that’s why I admire her,” Vivek told reporters at the Arts in Motion Studio’s annual show Dance With Joy aimed at creating awareness amongst women about equality, dogmas and outdated urban attitudes. “She decided that I don’t want to be everybody else, I want to be me and I want to do it my way,” he added.

‘Yuva’ and ‘Saathiya’ fame actor feels that Vidya has achieved such an stature with successes that she could be easily tagged as Vidya Balan Khan. “People were like – will she (Vidya) be able to do or not? But she has done it, she has proved it,” said the 36-year-old. “Now you should call her Vidya Balan Khan because she is creating the numbers that people have never seen before. Hats off to her,” he added.

“If a woman wants to do something, she can do anything,” Vivek said. Meanwhile, the actor is happy that attitude towards women and girls is changing even in rural areas now. “In the last six years I have seen a lot of changes. Villagers, who earlier were of the opinion that what’s the need for girls to study – now they want them to study, to become independent. So, that is more important,” said Vivek, who has been associated with a lot of other social causes. Emphasising on the social and economic independence of girls, he said: “The economic and social independence of girls is very important. There is a need to empower them, both socially and economically.”