Preity Zinta

She’s an unlikely movie star. Eyes dancing with mischief, dimples flashing impudent charm, curls tumbling in careless abandon and a face that almost schoolgirlish, she’s nothing like the well-coiffeured, perfectly made-up Barbie Doll stereotypes crowding movie town. Preity herself knows that she’s different. In one of her early interviews she confessed that the first time she saw herself on screen she was aghast. "My nose and face were so round, my teeth so crooked and my hair so bad! You see yourself in the mirror, but seeing yourself on the big screen is a different experience altogether," she shuddered.

Not that Preity had ever nurtured celluloid dreams. The daughter of an army officer, she grew up running wild with her brothers. A regular tomboy with skinned knees and an array of karate chops, she was planning a new career every week. One week she wanted to be an IAS officer, seven days later she had her eyes set on the Prime Minister’s office. Once she scandalised her grandmother by sitting at the dining table and going "Vroom, vroom..." She’d decided she was destined to be a truck driver! For six months she sprayed canvasses with a rainbow of colours convinced that she was the new world Michael Angelo. Then discovered video games. and overnight painting ceased to be a passion. Sometimes she talked business, sometimes toyed with the idea of becoming a psychologist and at other times spoke of training as an astronaut. She did reach for the stars but in a way she’d never imagined.

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Yeh Raaste Hain Pyaar Ke is a journey, not a destination. It’s just the beginning for me. I’m here for the long haul! — Deepak Shivdasani

The camera became a friend when the apple-cheeked Shimla girl was all of 12. A family friend was in a flurry. His model had caught the virus on D-day and his commercial was stuck. Cheekily, Preity walked up to him and told him to quit worrying. She’d take the girl’s place.

That was the zingy Zinta’s first brush with the ad mad world and like everything in life she took it in her stride. Her everyday world didn’t change. She was like any ordinary girl-next-door whose big rebellion when in boarding school at Kodaikanal was crunching chips and flipping through comics by the light of a flickering torch under cover of her blanket after the dorm light went off at 8 p.m.

Preity and Ajay in Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke

If modelling exposed her to anything revolutionary it was MTV. After ane vacation she returned to her hostel with a tape of MTV music videos. In the dark, dour days of Doordarshan monopoly, her tape initiated her schoolmates into a bold new world. "Everyone thought I was so cool!" she giggles.

Preity graduated in English and Criminal Psychology. She was en route to UCLA to do her MBA when suddenly a world turned topsy-turvy. Ever since that first ad she had been promoting products off and on to make some quick pocket money. There was Casper, Cadbury’s Perk and Liril. When Liril cast her in a starring role in their sudsy opera, for her it was just an ad for a soap! But splashing in a waterfall, strumming a lotus leaf, Preity was magical. And caught the eye of many showmen including script-writer Honey Irani who had been signed by the Tauranis to direct a film for Tips.

Honey had met Preity way back in 1996. When casting for her film Honey remembered the girl from the Casper ad and contacted her. The story of a college-going teenager who finds herself an unwed mother and ostracized by her small town community, was an unconventional role and not one a newcomer would grab. Ramesh Taurani admitted that when they approached her to play Priya he had expected Preity to turn down the film flat. "But she surprised me by saying ‘yes," he says still amazed by her decision.

Kya Yahi Pyar Hai that later became Friends and was eventually released as Kya Kehna, was the first film Preity signed and shot for. By the time it went on the floors Honey was no longer the director. Kundan Shah had stepped into her shoes and on Honey’s recommendation met with this "cute, young girl". He found her to be quite mad and immediately signed her on "because I thought she had the spontaneity and will-power to make this unconventional film work”.

Preity on her part never lost her initial enthusiasm in the project even though it dragged on for a long time. She walked around with a pillow tied to her tummy to "feel" pregnant. Once during a schedule in Ooty she took seven injections to bring down her fever so she could continue shooting. Her excitement was infectious, her screen presence electrifying.

Shekhar Kapur happened to see her screen test for Kya Kehna and called her to his office. He was planning a musical with half-a-dozen newcomers at the time, Ta Ram Ram Pum and he offered her one of the starring roles. He even had a contact ready for her to sign. Only Preity wasn’t ready to sign on the dotted line. She didn’t think movies were her scene. "Try it," Kapur cajoled her. Preity took out a one rupee coin and got ready to flip it. "If it’s heads I’ll do your film. If it’s tails it’ll be ‘bye’," she reportedly told him. Kapur held his breath! It was heads but Preity still didn’t do Ta Raa Ram Pum. Though Kapur signed her for the film soon after he got busy with Bandit Queen and the censor problems the film faced made him so disillusioned that he left India to make an Elizabeth. Ta Raa Ram Pum remained just a pipe dream. Preity was disappointed but not devastated. "It would have been great if it had worked out but it didn’t. So it wasn’t meant to be, I guess," she shrugged dismissively.

Preity eventually made her debut in Mani Ratnam’s Dil Se. It was only the second lead and Preity was not Mani’s first choice. The film fell into her lap after Rani Mukherjee had to opt out because of date problems. Dil Se revolved around mystery woman (Manisha Koirala) who turns out to be a human bomb and Shah Rukh Khan’s obsessive love for her. Preity played his Malayalee fiancee who doesn’t end up sharing her life with him.

Dil Se was a shocking debacle. The only one who came out of the bloodbath unscathed was Preity whose effortless performance and irreverent candor struck a chord. "Are you a virgin?" she asks her fiance, shocking him and everyone else, and still managing to draw a smile. That’s the secret of Preity’s success. She’s not afraid to risk denting middle-class morality and daunting enough to experiment with daringly different roles. But at the same time she doesn’t come across as a brazen feminist or a bold hussy. There’s a touching vulnerability about her and a charm that makes it easy to love her when her lover leaves her for another and even when she’s growing big with an illegitimate child as in Kya Kehna.

If Dil Se and Kya Kehna were gambles then so too was Soldier, her first superhit film that put her on the road to stardom. Abbas-Mustan’s musical thriller, as the title indicated, was a showcase for Bobby Deol’s machismo. But Preity as the Balle Balle belle who unknowingly falls in love with a hired assassin who’s out to gun down her father and his friends, managed to make an impression in this hero-dominated film with her flamboyant presence. Critics were once again kind to her and she even walked away with a couple of Best Debut awards. The general impression was that Preity’s natural performance in Soldier stemmed from the fact that her reel life persona was very close to her real self. Preity disagreed. "I’m a more serious person than the girl in Soldier and that was why the role was a challenge," she asserted, proving that though she doesn’t act like one she’s a "born" actress.

Between Soldier and Kya Kehna came a film that was the kind of role, Preity knew, if she couldn’t pull off could be suicidal for her as an actress. "Reet wasn’t one of those dancing-around-the-conifers kind of fantasy woman you see in the usual Hindi film. She was self-sufficient and doing something really worthwhile. To me a millennium woman is a gutsy woman who’s doing something worthwhile and I think women like Reet are the future," Preity rationalized when talking of Tanuja Chandra’s Sanghursh. In the film she played a CBI officer who’s tormented by her past, tortured by guilt and torn by her love for a criminal. If the Soldier girl was too frivolous for the real Preity then Reet was much too intense. "Very early in life a lot of things had gone wrong for her and affected her deeply. I’ve had a pretty smooth life in comparison," Preity confessed, but still managed to play the character with conviction. Sanghursh wasn’t a box-office bumper but Preity once again got away with bending the rules.

In a career spanning nine films Preity has quite often ended up with the wrong Mr Right. Like in Soldier and Sanghursh in Mission Kashmir too she was weaving dreams with a terrorist who’s intent on destroying her Eden. If Preity has had no problems consorting with men with dark pasts on screen it is because she believes that love is something that just happens. "It happened to Reet and Sufia. Love is not something that can be planned," she points out wisely.

Mission Kashmir like Soldier was a film that was dominated by its two heroes (Hrithik Roshan and Sanjay Dutt). Preity was fully aware that Vinod Chopra wasn’t offering her much of a role and taking her on only because she looked like a Kashmiri and was a happy person. "Sufia Parvez is the smile of the movie," she’d tell everyone. And cast a golden glow of sunshine on this rather dark movie. Sufia was the film’s too conscience and for people of the strife-torn valley arrived like a refreshing ray of optimism. Moving around in bulletproof cars and taking walks with bodyguards when shooting for the film, Preity realised that people in Kashmir had lost faith in order ever being restored. "They have stopped believing that they will ever see the valley the way it was," she sighed.The observation brought out the sensitivity that Preity projects into her performances and makes her movies believable.

Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega in comparison to most of her films was more conventional. On the surface it was just another romantic musical but Preity in her own way was once again being adventurous and risking alienating her audience by wooing away the supposed husband of her best friend when she is comatose. Without unnecessary dramatics Preity managed to endear herself in the role of the "other woman" and paved the way for a more daring Chori Chori Chupke Chupke.

Abbas-Mustan’s surprise hit of the year touched on the taboo topic of rent-a-womb. Only Preity amongst today’s heroines would be blase enough to accept the role of a prostitute who agrees to bail out a much-in-love couple with a baby in return for the big bucks. Her transformation from bar girl to mother-to-be, from stranger to soul-mate is heart-warming. If Chori Chori Chupke Chupke found a following in conventional circles, its thanks to Preity’s handling of yet another "brave" role. There’s nothing "bechari" or "bold" about Preity’s on screen personas. She doesn’t usually compromise but she can sacrifice without evoking pity or sympathy. When she tells Rani that she’d rather be her saheli than her souten and walks out of her home and life at the end of Chori Chori Chupke Chupke, there’re many who will readily agree that she’s the real heroine of the film. With her care-a-damn attitude to her career and her non-judgemental attitude to life Preity has Bollywood hooked!

On her part her jaunt in wonderland is an on-going adventure for this Alice. She hurtles down the fast lanes in search of something new and exciting. Today if there is a "different" role going film-makers know that she’s the one to approach. So Rakesh Roshan has opted for her over Amisha Patel in his next film with Hrithik, Koi Mil Gaya. Farhan Akhtar experimental film about today’s youth, Dil Chahta Hai has Preity leading Aamir Khan a merry dance. She’s gunning for Govinda in a crazy caper, Tere Ishq Mein Pad Gaya Re. And playing Madhuri’s rival in love in Deepak Shivdasani’s Yeh Raaste Hain Pyar Ke.

In Shivdasani’s love triangle Preity’s a car thief who steals Ajay Devgan’s heart. It’s a light-hearted role in complete contrast to Madhuri’s who’s a woman who becomes mentally imbalanced after marriage. Preity admits that the first day she faced the camera with Madhuri she was struck dumb. "I could only gape at her in awe," she recalls. But it didn’t take her long to snap out of her mind-numbing stupor and impress her producer-director who had initially signed the more screen savvy Karisma Kapoor for the role, with her "uninitiated uninhibition". "She’s so spontaneous!" he raves.
Spontaneity is Preity’s magic charm. Not for her the push-button, stock-in-trade expressions of her colleagues. Preity’s never attended an acting class or ever been taught how to emote. But she can still sigh and smile, simmer and sizzle at the snap of a finger. The emotions are usually real even when the characters are unreal. Like the nut of Farz. It’s not the need for variety or the desire to prove her versatility that prods her to jump from the path-breaking to the bubble-headed.It’s because great movies, she says, are taxing on the brain. Ye God, didn’t we tell you she was different!

— Roshmila Bhattacharya
roshmila@hotmail.com