NEW DELHI: After making sure Saif Ali Khan learnt the typical Uttar Pradesh dialect for Omkara, filmmaker Vishal Bharadwaj forced actress Vidya Balan to overcome her road phobia for a driving scene in his next movie Ishqiya.

“Vidya has an acute road phobia. She was petrified at the thought of driving earlier, but not any more,” said a source close to the film. “Driving a car was something completely alien to her. But Vishal saw to it that she mastered the art and now is pretty comfortable manoeuvring her car on the road,” the source added.

The filmmaker is known to be particular about making his actors learn the required skills in reality rather than making them pretend on screen.