There’s additional security posted outside Katrina Kaif’s home.Guess one can’t take chances with stalkers these days. The Bollywood sweetheart who is currently on a roll — yeah, she has just notched up another successful film — is jubilant.
Dressed in a pair of slim-fitting jeans and a pink tee-shirt, her pretty face devoid of pancake, she smiles, “At least they can’t say my latest film is doing well because Katrina Kaif wore a short skirt. I don’t need to show leg to win notices.’’
The actress doesn’t take kindly to being called Bollywood’s lucky mascot either.
“Saying I’m just lucky kind of annihilates all the hard work that I have put into my films,’’ she says. “It also derides the capability of my directors. A script makes a film work, a lot of hard work goes into getting the right script, and to just attribute a film’s success to my good-luck is not right.’’
Of course, she’d rather be called a lucky mascot than a jinx, but she says in her four years in Bollywood, she has strived to make things work. Today, she is in a cushy place. Even Kareena Kapoor, Bollywood’s No. 1 actress, concedes that Katrina is hot property, but Katz is definitely not resting on her laurels. “I’m not ruthlessly ambitious. But, there is greed in me to want to do better work. In that sense, I’m exactly like Akshay Kumar. I deeply admire that quality in him. He has done over a 100 films, yet Akshay still has the same hunger in him to strive to do better.’’
Katrina is no longer a girl in a hurry. She has just three films on the floor — De Dana Dan, Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani and Rajniti. And though she can earn some megabucks really fast, the girl from London with her anglicised Hindi, who began her star trek with the unorthodox Boom, is taking it easy.
Fully aware that the competition — Kareena, Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra and Asin — will eat her alive if she slips, Katz says, “Each successful film motivates me to work harder. For example, in Prakash Jha’s Rajniti I’m the sole girl with power-house performers like Naseeruddin Shah, Ajay Devgan, Manoj Bajpai and Nana Patekar. Arjun Rampal and Ranbir Kapoor, my two other co-stars, are also very good actors and my immediate aim is to raise the bar as far as my performance goes.’’
Admitting that it was important just being a top hero’s arm candy in movies like Welcome, Singh is Kinng, Partner and Race to consolidate her position in Bollywood, she now wants to walk down the path of respected performers. Yeah, Katrina knows the length of her skirt can carry her only this far. If she wishes to go further, which she does, she must stand up and deliver.
