Preity Zinta sick of her bubbly image
15th Mar 2006 09.31 IST
By Agencies
It has been eight years since her debut in Dil Se and now Preity Zinta wants to erase the image that has made her famous before her characters become caricatures.
"I'm sick of it. I'm sick of being bubbly. I'm sick of being talkative and I'm sick of being cute," said Preity, her trademark smile missing, but her dimples making a fleeting appearance.
"That image has stuck with me," she said in an interview. "I mean, you evolve, you know?"
Preity is hoping her role in Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna slated for release later this year, will help her find a new public image.
The movie has drawn a lot of attention in Bollywood, largely for its star-studded cast which, along with Preity, includes Amitabh Bachchan , Shah Rukh Khan , Rani Mukherjee and Abhishek Bachchan . The actors have been tight lipped about the plot, saying only that it's about relationships and marriages not being as perfect as they appear.
Preity said she plays a "very ambitious magazine editor."
Preity has a reputation for choosing roles that go against traditional mores, even if she has smiled her way through them.
She played an unwed mother in Kya Kehna! in 2000. In last year's blockbuster Salaam Namaste , she played a woman who defied her family and moved in with her boyfriend before getting married.
"I always look for something interesting," she said during the interview.
She never planned to be an actress and stumbled into Bollywood, when a well-known filmmaker spotted her in a soap advertisement while she was studying for a postgraduate degree in criminal psychology, Preity said.
Preity insisted the ad was just for fun. "I never thought I'd be an actor - ever," she recalled. "I had never gone to film school or done a dance class."
Instead, she's learned by trial and error while appearing in more than 20 movies. Along the way, Preity has become one of India's top actresses, but she says it was her role in the mob trial and the loss of friends during the tsunami in December 2004 that has given her a sense of perspective.
Preity was a star witness at the 2003 trial of a movie financier, Bharat Shah, who police suspected had links to Mumbai's underworld nexus. She testified about threats she had received from a gangster thought to be tied to Shah.
Several other movie stars who were also allegedly threatened retracted statements they gave to police, fearing retaliation from gangsters. Preity's testimony was supposed to remain confidential, but word of it leaked and the news was splashed on front pages across the country.
Shah was eventually found guilty of withholding information about the underworld but not of being directly linked to the mob.
Preity, meanwhile, was given police protection and forced to stay out of the public eye for about two months. "My life was a living hell," she said. "I think I aged 10 years then."
In 2004, Preity was fast asleep in a beachside villa in Thailand, when the killer waves struck and says she still remembers being awoken by the thundering noise of water smashing everything around her.
She ran and survived. Friends who had travelled with her, however, did not make it out - something she does not like to talk about.
"The people I went with were some friends I had grown up with. I'd known them all my life," she said before changing the subject without saying how many died.
"It really made me think about why everybody around me went and I didn't," Preity said, covering her eyes.
Since then, Preity says she's taken life slower - for example, she only made one film last year instead of working at the breakneck pace most Bollywood stars put up with.
"I'm more grounded now. I've started doing fewer films. I've started meditating," said Preity. "I want to live my today because I may not have a tomorrow."
Asian Shows
Cricket
Anupamaa
Kabhi Neem Neem Kabhi Shahad Shahad
Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi 2
35