‘I was very clear about what I wanted to do in Bollywood’
Ileana D’Cruz talks about working in the southern movie industry and how she learned to set her priorities straight
In my first ever shot, a big shell was dropped on my belly in slow motion. I even asked the director why we were doing it and he said it would look beautiful.
ILEANA D’CRUZ, ACTOR
With 11 years in showbiz under her belt, including six in Bollywood, actor Ileana D’Cruz has earned her due share of name and fame. Starting off with Telugu films, she made an easy transition to Hindi movies and made it big in a short span of time. However, looking back, the actor says the film industries are quite different in the way they function and in their aesthetics.
“When I was working in southern films, I never understood how films were made. In my first ever shot, there was a big shell that was dropped on my belly in slow motion. I even asked the director why we were doing it and he said it would look beautiful, and I wondered, ‘Really? But why? And how?’ So, each time that happened, I was told that I had a very attractive waist; it’ll look pretty and it’s very feminine, but I truly didn’t understand it,” reveals Ileana.
The actor adds that while film-makers would always look at it as “Indian women’s beauty”, for her, it was “just part of a shot”. She laughs, “I only thought of getting it over with quickly. I was not necessarily always comfortable about the fact that there used to be lots of shots around my waist, but it was something that I dealt with. In Bollywood, at least, I don’t see that happening so much.”
Talking about the southern film industry’s obsession with navels, Ileana maintains that nothing much has changed. “You see similar things even now. I didn’t understand it then and I don’t understand it now. I know people see it as objectification of women, but I am not too sure if you can say that. It may be, but this is how women are looked at — as a form of beauty, a form of art. I suppose they get picked for a film in this particular way,” says the actor, who will next be seen in Raid, opposite Ajay Devgn.
Ileana admits that she was quite young at the time and money was her biggest driving force. “I was only 18 at that time and I was interested in work. I was getting great offers [in the south] with big actors and directors, and it was all about money. It was only during my seventh film in the south when I felt that I had to stop doing this,” says Ileana, adding that she had her priorities set when she entered Bollywood.
“I was very clear about what I wanted to do here and what I didn’t want to do. So, that also makes a difference, and that’s why my career graph has been very different in Bollywood than what it had been in the south,” she says.