Priyanka Chopra Jonas on women-centric films in Bollywood and hopes to be challenged in her American projects – Mumbai Film Festival

In a conversation with fellow Indian actress Bhumi Pednekar at the Mumbai Film Festival, Indian actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas spoke about how she was warned against making women-centric films when she was working in Hindi films and her ambitions to expand her portfolio to expanding the USA. expand today.

In a relaxed masterclass that focused on the craft of acting, Chopra Jonas explained that she was discouraged from taking on one of her early roles, Madhur Bhandarkar’s film. Fashion (2008), in which she stars as a small-town girl who becomes a supermodel.

“I immediately signed up for the film Kris“I’ve been told that at the end of their careers, actresses only do female-oriented projects so they can win a national award,” says Chopra Jonas, who started acting after winning the Miss World pageant in 2000. “Then it was like, ‘There aren’t many female-oriented films.’

In fact, she won Best Actress at India’s prestigious National Awards in 2009 for Bhandarkar’s acclaimed film. However, this was only the beginning and not the end of a busy career.

Later in the conversation, she talked about the responsibility of starring in female-centric films and how she learned to relax when those films didn’t do well: “When you have a film with a female lead, you’re under a lot of pressure because we “We’re so small, and when they don’t get it right, you feel the collective failure of all women.”

“I used to feel like I was pushing women back a few steps, that I was letting them down because so few of us get the opportunity,” she continued. “But I learned to focus my mind on it; it’s not personal. When a film works, it works because it has something to say. And if it doesn’t work, it didn’t say what it was supposed to say.”

While she’s careful not to name future American projects because of the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, Chopra Jonas also said she feels she has a lot more to accomplish in her work out West.

“I have been working in Hindi films for about 12-13 years and in the US for about 6-8 years, so there is still a lot to do as I have not done the variety of work that I have in my Indian portfolio Do it in America achieved,” says Chopra Jonas, whose English-language credits include series Quantico And citadel and Netflix original film The White Tiger.

“I’m hoping that in the next couple of years, when the strike has hopefully reached a point where we can start having these conversations again, I’ll find something that I can really immerse myself in and just do the same work that I’m doing in Hindi I made a movie.”

She also talked about how she learned her craft from directors and how she saw everything that happened on set in the early days of her career, down to small details like where the lighting crew placed the lights: “I didn’t know anything then I didn’t do it. [Raj Kanwar’s] Andaaz, but Raj was a very funny Punjabi guy who taught me how to use humor. Keep going Aitraaz [directed by Abbas-Mastan] These guys taught me how to control my nerves.

“Kris [directed by Rakesh Roshan] taught me the commercial nature of films and how to sit twelve hours a day and handle only four takes.”

She added that she had a hard time in those early days and that it was only after that Krisa big budget superhero film starring Hrithik Roshan, which became a huge success and from which she could choose which roles she wanted to sign up for.

“After Aitraaz And KrisI did work that gave me a solid foundation. I got rave reviews and people told me, “I know my job,” even though I didn’t know I knew my job. Then I looked for work that would challenge me.”

Chopra Jonas is also the chairman of the Jio MAMI Mumbai Film Festival, which runs from October 27 to November 5 at the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Center and other venues in Mumbai.