NOTHING COMES NATURALLY TO ME: ALIA BHATT

The Student of the Year actor does not believe in taking acting seriously and rather prefers to let it go with the flow

She may personify spontaneity on screen but Alia Bhatt says acting is a “challenge” and she is “not naturally gifted” at it. The 25-year-old actor says she tries not to take her profession seriously and let the ‘act’ flow into the character arc when it is show time.

“Nothing comes naturally to me. I’m not saying acting is a terrible procedure. It’s a challenge. But the process is such that you don’t have to take it seriously and just let it flow naturally in a sense of the character, not you as an actor,” Bhatt told reporters in a group interview here.

The actor was in the national Capital to promote her upcoming film Raazi, with director Meghna Gulzar and co-star Vicky Kaushal. In the film set against the 1971 War, Bhatt plays an Indian woman who marries into a family of Pakistani Armymen to spy for her country.

Talking about her character, Sehmat, the actor says there is a misconception that one has to have a James Bond-like persona to be a spy.

“You don’t have to have a strong and forceful demeanour to look like a spy. She’s (Sehmat) very quiet, feminine and scared at the same time. She’s graceful, soft and at the same time very strong. I watched some films to get the character’s outline right but I didn’t have to do anything overtly. I just had to stay true to the situation.”

Bhatt, who recently completed five years in the Hindi film industry, says she has managed to stay away from a particular image as she is inherently wired to pick up “a variety of roles”.

“An actor is nothing without the story or the character they play. I’m automatically more attracted to the variety of roles, the scope of portrayal in the story and the genre. It’s not like I put too much thought in picking up roles.”

“You may take some time in choosing a type of character but eventually you know what your gut wants. First instinct is usually the one that you should go with and that’s what I do. Every time I give too much thought into a project, I know I should not be doing it,” she said. The film, based on Harinder Sikka’s novel ‘Calling Sehmat’, is a true story and Gulzar says it explores the existence of several “unsung heroes”.