Katrina Kaif completed 20 years last year as a film actor. Ever since, she has emerged as one of the top actresses in the industry, despite the challenges she faced initially as a foreigner. In an in-depth interview with Mayank Shekhar of Mid-Day, Katrina Kaif opened up about her beginnings in the film industry.
Katrina arrived in Mumbai from London and soon got film and modelling offers. This was a time when she didn’t even know Hindi. Though she had not watched Hindi films, she decided to take a shot. She said in the interview, “My heart was always here, in films. I don’t know how.”
Hence, she decided to prep to become a heroine. She revealed that she would start her day at 6:00 am and until 12 noon, she would attend kathak classes. She said, “(The classes would be conducted in a) small, non-AC room by Guruji Veeru Krishnan—Priyanka Chopra and Lara Dutta were the seniors [in class].”
Katrina Kaif’s first film was Boom (2003) where her co-star was Jackie Shroff. He advised her to master the Devanagari script. She stated, “On the set, those days, often you’d be handed the dialogues, right before the shoot. I didn’t want to be in a position where I was wondering what to do. The base in Devnagari saved me. There is then nothing complex [in the learning of the language].”
Yet, she faced challenges and even criticism. Katrina Kaif admitted, “An instance, I remember, from a South Indian film, with Venkatesh [Malliswari, 2004]— I was shooting a song, and there was someone on the set, yelling, ‘This girl can’t dance.’ I’ve had people telling me to my face: ‘You will not make it. You won’t succeed.’ Somehow, I wasn’t pained. Never felt sensitive about it. For me, it was about taking in the info. It didn’t penetrate me to stop.”
She continued, “I would sit and cry, but believe in the process in the healthiest way; work a little harder to perfect my craft. Eventually, I worked with all those same people who said, ‘We won’t take you in our films!’”
Also Read: Katrina Kaif reveals that she was dying to play Anushka Sharma’s part in Zero: “My audition for the role of Afiya moved Aanand L Rai; Shah Rukh Khan advised that I should trust him”
