She originally wanted to be an engineer,but winning Miss World put Priyanka Chopra on the path to Bollywood super stardom. Now she’s wowing America in a original smash hit TV drama. Sarfraz Manzoor meets a woman on a missionIt was January 2000 and in a car by Mumbai’s Juhu beach 17-year-old Priyanka Chopra was hanging out with friends. She had recently been crowned Miss India and was starting to consider a career in Bollywood. Through the windshield she could see six billboards advertising the latest Indian film. She told her friends she only wanted to be a star whether she could be on all six hoardings. A few years later, when Chopra was a successful Bollywood star, and she received a picture message from a friend: her face was plastered on all six billboards.
Priyanka Chopra is many things – exquisite,intelligent, down to soil and quick witted – but as that anecdote reveals, and one characteristic she does not lack is confidence. “I am a small – I won’t say arrogant – self-assured,” she says when we meet on a freezing Sunday in Montreal. Her time is so precious her publicists suggest we talk while she has her hair and gain-up done. I’m worried Chopra will find it hard to focus on the conversation, but this is a woman who thrives on multitasking: she can act, or sing and dance. “I’m a triple threat,” she laughs. Chopra laughs a lot after saying things you suspect are uttered with total conviction.
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Source: theguardian.com