Priyanka releases her memoirs

“THERE is no rulebook for me and I don’t believe in planning too much. I have never allowed my work to define me completely. All my life, I have chosen diverse roles – across genres, continents and platforms, and my career has never been dependent on my co-actors,” said actor Priyanka Chopra Jonas.

She was talking about her recently released memoir UnFinished at the Jaipur Literature Festival.

The book details the 38-year-old actress’s childhood in India and abroad, and her rise to fame.

Speaking to Shobhaa De, a columnist and writer, Chopra Jonas said she was at a place where she had come together and was in charge of everything in her life.

“That is a long way from a young high school girl, who got into fashion and later the Indian film industry.”

Although a private person, she wrote extensively about her husband and father in the book.

She said her husband, Nick Jonas, was a secure and conscientious man who provided her with a sense of balance.

“I can completely trust him to share my burdens.”

Talking about her late father, she said he always stood by her. “He was always on my side to encourage and always made it a point to be there for me.”

Meanwhile, actress Drew Barrymore said she loved Chopra Jonas at first sight.

“I have loved you at first sight but I love your book. There are all the details that you bring us in with you. The part where you and Nick are like full in love and it’s just so romantic. You’ve lived such an extraordinary life. It’s hard to pick which facet of your life I’d like to talk to you about,” Barrymore said, when Chopra Jonas was a guest on her talk show, The Drew Barrymore Show.

In the book, Chopra Jonas said she was advised in her early days to get a breast enhancement if she wanted to become an actress in Bollywood.

She shared that the first person she met suggested she fix her proportions, and her then-manager agreed with the idea.

“After a few minutes of small talk, the director/producer told me to stand up and twirl for him. I did. He stared at me long and hard, assessing me, and then suggested that I get a boob job, fix my jaw, and add a little more cushioning to my butt,” she wrote in the book.

“If I wanted to be an actress, he said, ‘I’d need to have my proportions fixed’, and he knew a great doctor in LA he could send me to. My then-manager voiced his agreement with the assessment.

“I left the director/producer’s office feeling stunned and small.

“Was he right that I couldn’t be successful unless I had so many body parts ‘fixed’? I thought of how individuals in the media and others in the industry had referred to me as ‘dusky’ and ‘different-looking’, and I wondered if I was cut out for this business after all.” ||