Long struggle before I play typical Bollywood heroine: Taapsee Pannu

“So, I am left with acting-oriented roles. I need to keep acting well to reach a point where I can also do those ‘happy-go-lucky’ roles and feel like a big heroine,” Taapsee told PTI in an interview.

“Before that I have to do the struggle of doing variety so that people see that I am a decent actor and I look decent enough to be placed as a typical heroine.”

The 28-year-old actress is happy that the upcoming list of her on-screen outings, including megastar Amitabh Bachchan-starrer “Pink”, will prove her acting credentials thanks to the diversity in characters.

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“‘Pink’ is an intense thriller, which is going to show the audience a different side of me as an actor. Next, I am doing a love story, then there is ‘Ghazi’, where I am playing a Bangladeshi refugee. None of the roles that I am doing now are similar to each other. Bollywood has offered me crazy variety of roles.”

Talking about her experience of sharing screen space with Bachchan, Taapsee says she was excited to work with him.

“It was intimidating working with Mr Bachchan… I can remember the first shot with him. It was the easiest shot you can imagine. I had to just sleep. He was sitting and talking to one of the co actors in the shot and I had to just lie down on the sofa and sleep.

“I had to give so many retakes for that shot because I couldn’t keep my eyes still, they were always flickering. I was excited, not nervous.”

“Ghazi”, Taapsee says, it is India’s first submarine movie, based on the true incidents of the mysterious sinking of PNS Ghazi, a Pakistan Submarine, by INS Rajput (D141) during the Indo-Pak war of 1971.

“‘Ghazi’ is complete. It’s a bilingual, Telgu and Hindi. It is going to be India’s first submarine film. Not many people know there was a subarmine in Pakisthan called Ghazi which sank in Indian waters during 1971 war. We have shot 75 per cent of the film inside a submarine.”

Taapsee will next be seen in actor Prakash Raj’s Hindi directorial debut “Tadka”, which also stars Ali Fazal.

The actress has worked with Raj in the past as a co-star in many Telugu films but Taapsee says she enjoyed him as a director the most.

“Prakash Raj has directed a few films in South but this is going to be his first film in Hindi as a director. He is crazy. I’ve worked with him as an actor in two films in Telugu, so this is the first time I’m working with him as a director. I think I like him as a director much more.

“Probably as an actor we don’t really get to interact that much but because he is the director now I get to know a lot more about him and how he thinks.”

Taapsee plays a Goan Catholic in the movie, which is a remake of Malayalam film “Salt and Pepper”. The actress is particularly excited about this movie as she got her hair coloured pink for her role.

“The pink colour of my hair is for the film “Takda”. Ali and I are paired opposite each other. In the movie, I play a Goan Catholic, who is an extremely crazy chic, so I had to do something really crazy.

“I feel as an actor if you place your picture people should be immediately able to recognise the movie and if you cannot make it out and it looks same for so many movies then you don’t really succeed as an actor.”

The actress even wrote her own dialogues, which she says did not come easy to her.

“Prakash sir believes that as actors we have to do much more than just mouthing our lines and performing. You actually have to make those lines your own and probably if you know the character well write them also yourself.

“There was a lot in our hands to go about because we both played characters which were spontaneous and livewire. We had to do a lot of answering back to each other so we had to come up with a lot of things on our own. I always improvise on my lines but to write dialogues from the scratch was stressful.” Deepika Padukone states about how sport has kept her going and helped her to face difficult situations.