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I don’t like being jealous: Ileana D’Cruz
She was already a marquee name in the Tamil and Telugu film industries, when actor Ileana D’Cruz entered Bollywood, and made a splash with her first Hindi film, Barfi (2012). Out of the seven-odd Bollywood films she has done in this time, six had her sharing the screen with another female lead — it was Priyanka Chopra in Barfi; Nargis Fakhri in Main Tera Hero (2014); Kalki Koechlin in Happy Ending (2014); Esha Gupta in Rustom (2016) and Baadshaho; and Athiya Shetty in Mubarakan.
Asked if she ever felt insecure about her space in these two-heroine films, Ileana says, “I’m a fairly mature woman and I’ve realised that I’m not going to grow if I keep thinking, ‘The other heroine in the film is so much better than me.’ I would rather take inspiration from them. There are many women out there who’re stunning, have got great bodies, but I’m not going to be negative about it.”
While most actors would vie for maximum screen space in a multi-starrer, for Ileana, that’s a trivial concern. “I’m not competing with everyone. I don’t like being jealous,” she says. “Someone can be great, but I’m good in my own way, too, and have my own USP.”
The actor did have a phase of insecurity, as an “incredibly naïve” film newbie at 18. Now, poised at 30, she recalls feeling awestruck and insecure about another female star. “But then, I thought, I can either be inspired by it and better myself, or I can just be envious,” she says laughing.
The self-confidence that she developed got her a full kitty of lead roles in Bollywood. Ileana states, “I know that I hold myself in a certain regard and I wouldn’t want to settle for anything other than the lead, unless it’s an outstanding role. As luck would have it, I’ve always got to play the lead.”