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There was a time when Katrina Kaif, who turns 40 on July 16, was taken to meet important filmmakers by her mentor Salman Khan. One of them was, of course, Sanjay Leela Bhansali. He was then planning Bajirao Mastani.
Salman and Sanjay were very close friends back then. Hence when Salman confidently accompanied the lovely Katrina to the Bhansali residence, he was confident he would never be turned down.
To his shock, Bhansali refused flatly to consider Katrina Kaif for Mastani, reasoning that the character of Mastani required to speak lengthy lines of Hindi-Urdu dialogues, whereas Katrina knew no Hindi beyond ‘Namaste’ and ‘Kaise Hain Aap’.
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“Don’t worry, Bro. We will take care of that. You just make the film with the two of us,” Salman reassured Bhansali.
But the fastidious filmmaker was far from convinced. An infuriated Salman vowed that one day this lovely British Indian would rule Bollywood. And she did!
Katrina Kaif hired a Hindi-Urdu tutor. Although her command of Hindi-Urdu is still dodgy, she manages to get by without faltering over her words. Being married into a Punjabi family helps.
Extremely ambitious, Katrina was very particular about her co-stars. She refused to co-star with Abhishek Bachchan at a time when he was going through a career low. I wonder if she would agree to do a film with Vicky Kaushal.
In an interview with this writer in 2006, Katrina Kaif said, “I don’t know what the future holds. I only know I’ve to be true to my work. Tomorrow anything can happen. You never know. This is a very unpredictable business. I worked very hard as a model for two-and-a-half years doing ramp shows, ads. A modelling career for a girl starts at 16 and ends at about 24. In between, I went to college. I think I’ve grown up, as everyone does. I want everything to go as smoothly as possible.”
About being perceived as just a pretty face, Katrina had said in the same interview, “I was pretty sure that they’d see me for what I am. Sure, to begin with, I was bound to be perceived as a face. But I knew people would eventually relate to the real me, who was bound to show up in my performances. And the real me is not just a glamorous person. That’s to do with the profession. I’m a simple home-bound girl in real life. I live in my own dream world. Most of the time, I’m trying to cope with the fact that reality doesn’t quite match up with image. But I’m learning and coping. Everything can’t be pretty and perfect in real life.”
This year Katrina has a lot to smile about on her birthday. Katrina dislikes how her unparalleled success ratio is undermined by being dismissed as a matter of luck, which really gets her goat.
“It’s not as if I was just lucky to be in successful films. Of course, I’ve been lucky. But I’ve also worked very hard to get where I am. And please don’t forget I chose those films that went on to be successful. So please grant me with that bit of intelligence,” she had once told me.
Before one could react to that, Katrina Kaif quickly added, “And by the way,I was advised by friends not to do many of the films that have eventually turned out to be hits.”
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