Where Angels dare

Where Angels dare

Destiny had different plans for Perizaad Zorabian, who learnt ballet at 12 and took lessons
in African and Latin dance, writes
Shoma A Chatterji

Meet Perizaad Zorabian. Within five minutes, her bubbly charm will infect you. Within five years of having stepped into the industry, she has bagged roles that would be the envy of many an established star. But then she is talented, trained and beautiful. She has a steady head on steady shoulders and refuses to wear the airs of a star. A management student at the USA, Perizaad decided to go the Lee Strasberg School of Theatre at New York to study theatre. "My father, who runs a successful poultry, would not listen to my desire to get into dancing and theatre. He wanted me to go in for a management degree at the USA."
"Soon after my return, model coordinator Mona Irani asked me whether I would care to do a modelling stint for a fairness cream. It was my first commercial and offers started pouring in. Mona introduced me to Nagesh Kukkonoor. He felt my photographs projected me as a girl with too much of a Western look. Then he auditioned me and the next thing I knew, I was playing the female lead in Bollywood Calling," Perizaad reminisces.
She also did a Chinese film called Bandung Sonata. She portrayed Indira Gandhi as a young woman. Films like Mumbai Matinee, Joggers' Park, Morning Raga, Ek Ajnabi and Bappa Roy's Devaki, which have done the rounds of international film festivals, followed this. "I have been extremely lucky to have done the films I got to do. I am not slotted into any genres or stereotypical roles. I have been fortunate to work with people I got to work with. For example, I can do films as distanced from each other such as Devaki and Highway 203 and Moonlight without blinking my eyes. Add to that my role in Ek Ajnabee with Mr Bachchan himself," she exclaims with pride.
Devaki had her playing a city girl counterpointed with a village girl played by Suman Ranganathan. "The film raises questions about who is really a victim ~ the rural girl or the city girl. It is an emotionally gripping film. I play Nandini who appears to have everything any girl would envy. But she really has nothing. She comes to realise that she is a bigger loser than Devaki, the village girl and all the show is only a faade. Devaki was a real learning experience for me because we shot in the most unimaginable of circumstances at incredible locales for unbelievable hours for days together. But there was this team spirit that kept us going and I feel wiser having gone through it all," she recalls.
Highway 203 is a psychological thriller directed by Shadab Khan, son of the late Amjad Khan, in which Perizaad is cast opposite KK Menon. Moonlight, directed by Suhail Tatari in Hindi, is a romantic love story between a struggling young actress and a successful filmmaker where one wants to be the other and at the same time, one completes the other. "Shekhar Suman plays the director while I play the actress." The most difficult role she has played till date is the one she did in Apoorva Lakhia's Ek Ajnabee. "When Bunty Walia called me up and told me about this role, I refused to believe him. I thought it would be an itsy-bitsy role at best but I would have done it even if it had been a small role. Who would be fool enough to refuse the chance to be in the same frame as Mr Bachchan, tell me?" She would love to be choosy about picking roles but right now, "I do not have much of a choice," says Perizaad candidly.
She has also done a play, The Unfaithful in English with Kunal Vijaykar where she shared the stage with Cyrus Broacha and Rohit Roy. "I would love to act in the Hindi version as well," she adds. Then there is Malcolm McDowells's British film Exit. "I play a glamourous little sex kitten who wins the Miss India crown and goes ahead to con a multi-billionaire who is at least 70 years old."
"I am a spontaneous actress but I need direction to be kept in control. I act with great honesty. But cinema is a medium with different magnifications such as the camera movements could differ from one director to another and a director alone can control his actors under a scenario orchestrated by him. An actor may not know about the different shades thrown up through close-ups, mid-shots, long-shots, etc and for these, a director must be in control." I tell her that we are intrigued by her name. What does it mean? It means "Queen of Angels" she says.