Anushka Sharma on what it's like working with different film directors
Anushka Sharma is geared up to begin her work day. Hair and make-up - check. Starbucks coffee - check. She walks in with a grimace. Are we in trouble?
It's the heels, and not us, that's the cause of discomfort. And so begins her first interview, of the umpteen lined up to promote Jab Harry Met Sejal. With the Imtiaz Ali directed film, Sharma has knocked off another director off her wish list. Don't expect her to share names of more filmmakers she'd like to work with. "I don't want to jinx it," she says.
Yes, Sharat Katariya (his Sui Dhaaga is her next) and Aanand L Rai (the Shah Rukh Khan-starer dwarf project) were on it. "I'm just happy that I can fit into so many directors' vision," she says, going on to list the directors she has collaborated with including Karan Johar, Aditya Chopra, Yash Chopra, Imtiaz Ali, Vishal Bhardwaj and Anurag Kashpyap.
She adds that it is through them that one gets to have a varied filmography and "get something different to do and belong in a different milieu". Says Sharma, "The fact that all these directors can imagine me in their films, is in itself my biggest achievement."
Talking about featuring in an Imtiaz Ali romance, Sharma was all praise for how the filmmaker has created memorable female characters, most popular being Geet from Jab We Met. Ali's female characters have a mind of their own and an emotional arc of their own even as they help despondent men overcome their lows.
"Even if they don't start off being free-spirited, they have it inside (them)," observed Sharma. "It's at the edges, just waiting to come out." Travel, an integral and now familiar part of Ali's oeuvre, becomes a means to let this latent self-emerge. Sejal, the Gujarati lawyer in search of her engagement ring, discovers her herself through a Euro trip with a free-spirited tour guide (Shah Rukh Khan).
"She has a lot of freedom but there is no exposure to life," said Sharma adding that Sejal is someone who has so far led an insular life. "When she goes on this journey alone, to the exact places that she has been with her family, but this time with a man whose mind is far more evolved and open than her own, she discovers more to life."
The love story is her third film with Shah Rukh Khan, with another coming up next year. Given that Sharma made her debut with Khan in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi and has known him for a decade now, she said she shares a more comfortable rapport with the actor when compared to Aamir Khan and Salman Khan, her co-stars in P.K. and Sultan respectively
Sharma, who is finishing her third home production Pari, which also features Bengali actor Parambrata Chatterjee, also praised Shah Rukh for producing and starring in a film like Dear Zindagi, which Central Board of Film Certification would perhaps term as "lady-oriented" cinema. "He is super cool for doing that," she said, "and I hope younger actors follow suit".
(Courtesy of Mail Today.)