BIGGER IS BETTER
Bulk is less evil than you think—work a cocoon coat with a nipped waist and high heels for an instant hourglass figure (and sexy French style). director’s mind was made up, and a week later, the raven-haired beauty who’d only just turned 17, found herself in stifling Chennai, preparing for her Tamil debut, Madrasapattinam. She plainly admits she was terrified. But before she knew it, the anxiety was gone and she began to enjoy the process. Madrasapattinam was a runaway hit, and Amy’s performance roundly appreciated. At the premiere, Vijay introduced her to his friend Gautam Menon, another prolific South Indian director. And a week later, Menon called to say he was directing a Bollywood film and he wanted Amy for the lead.
Once more, she said yes to fate— she’d already done a film, how different could it be? “What a shock to the system,” she says, sounding a bit in shock still. “I had to change everything—learn to dance, learn Hindi, learn to be this character who I’m not at all like in real life,” she adds. What about the off screen implications of being a Bollywood personality? The tabloids have already got her cast in a searing romance with her good looking co-star, Prateik Babbar. “I get so scared of the stuff in the papers. I’m not dating Prateik, but I’m very fond of him. It will take me a while to get used to hearing about myself in the news,” she says. “For now, I’m not yet ‘big’, so I’m trying to enjoy the privacy while it lasts,” she says. Does she find time to be homesick? “At first I did, but my family and friends visit me often, and people have been so lovely to me here—i shifted to Mumbai in September and already it has become my second home,” she says.
She tells me she’s having fun discovering the city and the food, the latter a bit haltingly. “I’ve always loved butter chicken,” she reveals. “When I got here, it’s the first thing I ordered because I thought it would be best to begin with something familiar. It wasn’t even slightly similar, I couldn’t handle the spice,” she adds. How does she keep her head above, while she starts work on her next South Indian film? “I don’t take things seriously. If life got too settled now, I’d be bored,” she signs off with a smile.