Deepika Padukone Opens Up About the Guilt She Feels as a Working Mom

Deepika Padukone is one of Bollywood's biggest stars, and now she's also a mom.

Padukone, who shares a baby daughter named Dua with her husband Ranveer Singh, opens up to Marie Claire about balancing raising a child with the demands of her career as part of our Motherhood Issue.

"I do have to tell myself that your life doesn't end the minute you have a child, and that you do need to get back to your life, or at least a part of your life before you had a baby…but every moment where I'm not able to be with her, there is guilt," Padukone, named one of Marie Claire's 2025 class of Power Moms, reveals.

The Om Shanti Om actress is learning day by day what she wants her work life to look like now that she's a mother—whether she wants to work in the same way as before or just see how things "evolve."

But some people in her entourage aren't as happy as she is to go with the flow, it seems. For example, she recently told a director that she couldn't meet with him because she needed to be with her daughter, and his response was surprising, to say the least.

"He turned around and said, ‘Oh, looks like she's taking motherhood very seriously,'" Padukone told Marie Claire. "I don't know if that was a compliment or a jab. What does that mean, taking motherhood seriously? Yeah, of course I am!"

Padukone and Singh are aligned on what they want their parenting to look like, namely that they want to "be there for Dua’s every need." They don't care about any criticism that may come out of that.

"Whether it's what movies I want to do…how I want to live my life or the things that I'm really passionate about, and beyond that, it doesn't even matter what anyone else thinks," Padukone said. "I am someone who has always been able to tune out and just listen to my instinct."