Bipasha Basu is often credited as one of the most beautiful and sexy female actors we have in Bollywood today. In fact, even her critics have credited her for working hard to become a famous model and actor with her dusky complexion in an industry dominated by the fair-skinned. She ranked 8 in Times’ 50 most Desirable Women in 2011. Twice, she has been named the Sexiest Woman in Asia. Given her svelte frame and bold image, Bipasha is a head-turner, but she recently revealed that it hasn’t been that way always. In her younger days, she too was a victim of Indian mentality that only fair is beautiful. She admitted that as a child and teenager, she wasn’t considered pretty due to her dusky complexion.

“I was never meant to be beautiful. I was a short, dark and round girl. Nobody thought I was pretty at all. Cruel jokes have been made about it. I think most people were surprised by the way I looked,” Bipasha said in a soon-to-be-aired episode of Big CBS Love’s  show India’s Glam Diva. Bipasha also revealed that when she was younger, she was more interested in academics than modelling. She wanted to become a doctor, but decided against it when, during a science class, she had to dissect a rat and she fainted instead. She then switched to modelling. After winning a beauty contest at the age of 17, she never looked back. She was recently seen in Players, and is now gearing up for the release of romantic comedy Jodi Breakers.

India’s Glam Diva brings together women from the entertainment and sports industry to compete as India’s final choice of the most glamorous diva. Those in the competition include Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, Priyanka Chopra, Vidya Balan, Aishwarya Rai, Katrina Kaif, Sonam Kapoor, Sunidhi Chauhan, Ekta Kapoor, Sonakshi Sinha, Sania Mirza, Freida Pinto, Shruti Haasan and Bipasha.

India’s Glam Diva airs on weekends at 8pm on Big CBS Love.

ALSO READ: Bipasha Basu: Madhavan is fat

Who is the most desirable woman in the world? Bollywood actor Priyanka Chopra, who stars in the recent release Agneepath, is on No.70 on the list of 99 hot women published by popular men’s website AskMen.com. Indo-Canadian pornstar Sunny, who made her presence felt in India recently on reality show Bigg Boss 5, ranked on No.82 – surprisingly low. Maybe her rankings will go up after she is seen in Mahesh Bhatt’s film Jism 2. But we wonder what’s left to show for the Penthouse pet really!

India’s export to Hollywood, Freida Pinto ranks 58 – hotter than Priyanka! Maybe because of Freida’s familiarity or maybe because of her ‘exotic’ looks. Whatever the case is, AskMen has its own interesting reasons for the rankings, which we have mentioned below each girl’s picture. Do tell us if you agree with the rankings!

Photos: AskMen.com

Dev Patel acts with Tena Desae and veteran Hollywood actors like Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Tom Wilkinson in Fox Searchlight Pictures’ The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Directed by John Madden, the film follows a group of British retirees who decide to “outsource” their retirement to less expensive and seemingly exotic India. Enticed by advertisements for the newly restored Marigold Hotel and bolstered with visions of a life of leisure, they arrive to find the palace a shell of its former self. Though the new environment is less luxurious than imagined, they are forever transformed by their shared experiences, discovering that life and love can begin again when you let go of the past. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel releases May 4, 2012 internationally.

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Freida Pinto may be living in Santa Monica, shopping at Rodeo Drive, whiling away sultry nights at Sunset Boulevard and filming in the plush studios of Hollywood, but it seems the Slumdog Millionaire gal isn’t restricting herself to foreign shores. We hear the internationally-known Indian actor does dream of mouthing Hindi dialogues and fusing Kathakali steps with some salsa moves! The Mumbai born and bred actor said in a recent interview that she has a long list of Bollywood filmmakers she would like to work with. Hey, hold on! Yash Chopra and Karan Johar aren’t on her list. She isn’t dreaming of the typical song and dance, masala-laden drama. It’s only new-age, independent, gutsy, unconventional films for Freida, please. The kind of cinema made by Anurag Kashyap, Bejoy Nambiar, Vishal Bhardwaj and Nandita Das. And Konkona Sensharma if and when she decides to turn director. Perhaps Freida is slowly becoming aware that her dusky looks and unconventional demeanour suit these hatke Bollywood films better than the mainstream ones? While this makes good news for her Indian fans, we wonder why Freida, who so far has maintained her distance from Bollywood, is changing her mind? Is it because she is done with her Hollywood stint? Or the Woody Allens and Danny Boyles are no longer queuing up at her doorstep with interesting offers? If it isn’t any of the that, perhaps realisation has dawned upon her that when Spanish talents like Penelope Cruz and Salma Hayek haven’t managed to step into the reigning shoes of America’s sweethearts Julia Roberts and Anne Hathaway, there is slim chance she will be able to do it! And so, a wise move would be to keep her options open and never say never!

Immortals

If your first reaction to this image is to turn away, we don’t blame you. Looks like Freida Pinto had a bad day coordinating styles, colours and her posture on the red carpet. So what went wrong? First, the girl seems to have forgotten that she is in Goa, where sand, surf and swimwear rule. Dear Freida, were you suffering from the Ghajini syndrome that made you forget where you were! If not, then we would like to ask you the million dollar question – why a silk-satin churidar outfit in ultra-cazh Goa? Second, it certainly looks as if the cling of the slim-fit pants hasn’t really taken a liking for your bony legs. The satin texture seems to be frowning in desperation at being wrapped around your oh-so-slender pins. We suggest a crash course on what fabrics look good on your svelteness would help a lot. Third, what’s with that cotton candy pink bow dangling right in the middle of your dress? Please don’t tell us that it’s the USP of your outfit! If you did want to hang something there, a cream coloured thingie would’ve been just fine. Last, but definitely not the least, if after all the horrific points that you managed to ignore, if you still decided to wear this on the red carpet, what’s with your posture, darling? Straighten up and stick with what likes you, rather than what you think we will like!

Shahrukh Khan was the chief guest at the inauguration of the 11-day International Film Festival of India (IFFI). The actor was at his hilarious best and had Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting Ambika Soni and Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamat in splits by threatening to strip down to his beach wear, which he claimed he was wearing beneath his formal slacks. “I wanted to wear my bermudas, but then chose to wear my suit. But I am still wearing bermudas beneath. Do you want me to take my pants off,” he asked, leaving the 1,000 strong audience laughing their guts out. “The younger girls (referring to compere Tisca Chopra and actor Rituparna Sengupta) and Ambikaji are saying ‘take it off, take it off’!” Khan chided in banter, after being at the receiving end of Soni’s playful jibe at him in her introductory speech.Soni had earlier said that it was “extremely easy” to get Shahrukh Khan to attend the festival and that she did not have to approach any “powerful” friends and people to coax the Bollywood Baadshah to attend the mega I&B event. “All I told him was that we need to him to come to the festival to raise the profile of the IFFI (International Film Festival of India). And he said yes,” Soni said, even as Shahrukh had the organisers waiting for nearly 40 minutes before he arrived at the venue. The festival will screen more than 100 movies from 65 countries and will have special packages like ‘Master Classes’ by renowned film personalities like Milcho Manchevski, Hugh Welchman, Laurence Kardish and a first of its kind package of 3D and animation movies. Actor Madhuri Dixit and Freida Pinto are also attending the festival.

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Freida Pinto on ‘Immortals’, Hollywood and Bollywood

The fierce love-hate debates about Rockstar last week drowned out a milestone. On 11.11.11, an approximately US$130 million Hollywood movie directed by an Indian and starring an Indian actress in the lead role was released. Immortals, a fantasy about gods, mortals and mythical creatures, is directed by Tarsem Singh Dhandwar (a graduate of Bishop Cotton School and Hans Raj College) and features Mumbai gal Freida Pinto as the virgin oracle Phaedra. Sadly, the film was a clunker—American critic Roger Ebert started his review with the line, ‘Immortals is without doubt the best-looking awful movie you will ever see.’ But it underlined an important fact: Indians are finally arriving in Hollywood.

Desis are everywhere. Two weeks ago, another Hollywood film with an Indian lead was released—A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas starring Kal Penn (original name: Kalpen Suresh Modi). 30 Minutes or Less, released in September, had funnyman Aziz Ansari teaming up with Oscar-nominated Jesse Eisenberg. Coming up is Anil Kapoor in Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (rumour is that it’s a minuscule role, but still, the Kapoor from Chembur will be facing off with one of the world’s biggest stars, Tom Cruise).

Meanwhile, American television is littered with Indian faces—so Kunal Nayyar plays a studious south Indian on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory; Parminder Nagra was on ER; Sendhil Ramamurthy on Heroes; and Naveen Andrews on Lost. There’s also action behind the camera—big-ticket Indian-origin directors such as Mira Nair, M Night Shyamalan, Jay Chandrasekhar (The Dukes of Hazzard); animators like Sanjay Patel, an acclaimed Pixar artist who has had his work exhibited at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum; and, of course, all the traction that comes from Reliance Entertainment’s headline-making $825 million deal with Steven Spielberg’s company DreamWorks.

Notably, ethnicity is no longer a defining trait. So Pinto isn’t reduced to playing the Indian girl next door (in Miral, she is Palestinian). I once asked Ansari why his routines didn’t focus on his Indian heritage. He said: “I think any kind of stereotype jokes are just so done. It’s not original. I just feel that it’s more interesting to talk about just what makes me unique as a person and that applies to everybody regardless of ethnicity. So it’s like, why do a joke about curry? You could go home and write those jokes yourself.”

Yet, while visibility has increased dramatically, Indians still don’t have the clout to engineer A-list deals, push projects and call the shots. Ashok Amritraj, our original desi-in-LA, said to me in an email that this was the case when he first ventured into Hollywood in 1980 and it pretty much remains the same. He wrote: ‘From the standpoint of being a Player (other than myself, very sorry to sound egotistical), even today, I don’t believe that has changed.’ (Ashok has produced over 100 films, including gems like Blue Valentine).

So far, the great Bollywood dream of creating an Indian film that connects with Western audiences has also come to naught. The stupendous success of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in 2000 inspired many local filmmakers to aim beyond NRI viewers. But experiments like Kites were a disaster, and eventually, we were beaten at our own game by Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire, essentially a Bollywood film reworked for global audiences. Bollywood actors haven’t made much of a dent either—Aishwarya Rai Bachchan did a few forgettable films, Hrithik Roshan signed on with an A-list talent agency but no films materialised, and Mallika Sherawat insisted that Hollywood was showing her “a lot of love” but all that came out of it was the execrable Hisss.

Shekhar Kapur once famously said Asian culture would become the norm and soon, when Spider-Man takes off his mask, he will either be Indian or Chinese. I don’t see that happening anytime soon. But I will admit that I feel foolishly pleased when an expensive Hollywood film (even a bad one) ends with the credit: Directed by Tarsem Singh Dhandwar.

The Slumdog Millionaire actor speaks about being a woman in showbiz, and about her films and directors

She plays a priestess with the power to see the future in Hollywood film Immortals and actor Freida Pinto says if she actually gets such powers, she would like to increase the longevity of her career as women don’t have a shelf life in filmdom. “If I had Phaedra’s powers and if I could look into the future, I think I would want longevity in my career. I say from the point of view that women as such do not have greater shelf life in this industry,” Freida said. However, there are a few exceptions, she says. “Some of them defy all odds like Helen Mirren or Meryl Streep, who can do exactly what a 20-year-old can do. So I think I would wish for that,” she added.

Directed by Tarsem Singh, the film Immortals starring Henry Cavill, Mickey Rourke and Luke Evans is an epic tale of treachery, vengeance and destiny, and the actor is all praise for the director. “What is unique about this film is it is completely Tarsem’s take. He never puts you in a box tight room and wants you to repeat his vision word to word. He not only wants you to understand his vision but also bring in your own take to the film,” said Freida, who rose to fame with Danny Boyle’s Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. “I was to incorporate stillness in my character from the very beginning, which meant no twitching of the eyebrows or too many body movements. He felt that since Phaedra is so contained and internalised, everything had to come out through the eyes and her words rather than the body movement. Because he gave me the flexibility and chance to understand his vision and bring that into my character, I think we managed to pull it off,” she said.

Ever since her rise to fame, the 27-year-old has been part of an interesting mix of films like You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Miral, Rise of the Planet of the Apes among others and she says each film has been a learning experience.

“Every director that I have worked with has had a USP. Danny sees how he keeps you sucked into the character throughout the film. With Woody Allen, it’s hands off but sometimes hands on, so you sometimes don’t know which way you are going. Every time you deliver a line you look at him for approval, which is quite rare to receive. He was interesting to work with, as he lets you improvise and play with the lines,” she said.

“Julian Schnabel of Miral was very fatherly and kind and compassionate about the story he was filming. With Tarsem it was a completely different world. Nothing like what I had already experienced.”

With Freida being an Indian actor, one would always think she would be a part of Bollywood but she has ruled out any such plan. However, Freida does admit that with the advent of modern technology, the Hindi film industry’s style is changing.

“They (Bollywood films) are an amazing celebration, we have enjoyed them for years. At the moment it is changing and with directors like Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar Banerjee…it’s a style that is slowly changing; something that we saw in the 1980s and it’s happening again with modern technology. I have already done Trishna, so when people see it, they’ll know I’ve already done a Hindi film,” she said.

“Even Slumdog… for me is an Indian film, it was directed by an English director but one cannot discredit the fact that there was Anil Kapoor or Irrfan Khan in the film,” she added.

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Freida Pinto goes nude for ‘Immortals’! Or does she?

You’ve seen her in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, but Immortals is actually Freida Pinto’s first big film. The actor revealed in an interview to an American paper recently that she had signed and started work on Immortals before Apes. It was a huge step for Freida, as her first commercial big-budget Hollywood film. So you wouldn’t be surprised that she agreed to go nude for it, right? Come on, who in Freida’s position will say no? Even Freida didn’t refuse to do it. And not because she was uncomfortable. Her reason was completely different – she wasn’t asked to do it! Yes, Freida was told from the beginning that a body double – you read that right! – would be doing the nude scenes and there was never any question of her having to do it! Freida revealed in the same interview that Tarsem Singh, the director, felt that there was no actual acting required in the scenes so there was no need for Freida to be in them. Hmm… so does that mean Freida is actually acting in the other scenes of the film? This we got to see!

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TRISHNA trailer: Freida Pinto in Anurag Kashyap’s film

Bollywood has always celebrated Navratri with great fanfare and enthusiasm – from Salman Khan and Aishwarya Rai’s garba moves in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam to Farhan Akhtar and his band crooning a cheesy dandiya number in Rock On. This festival gives everyone a chance to come out of their mundane routines and get groovy. The nine days of the festival are celebrated with different colours, one for each day. Since B-town has so many awesome Navratri moments to cherish, today we look at actor’s who have donned the festive blues. And, as always, all of them come out looking amazingly sexy!

Screenings at the 55th BFI London Film Festival include Gandu (Q – Bengali), Nauka Dubi (Rituparno Ghosh – Bengali), Nobel Chor (Suman Ghosh – Bengali), Anhey Gorhey da Daan (Gurvinder Singh – Punjabi), Adaminte Makan Abu (Salim Ahamed – Malayalam, which won big at the National Awards recently) and Trishna (Michael Winterbottom – English). A number of Hindi films were also sent in for selection, but none managed to make it into the final list. You may remember that Trishna stars Freida Pinto and there is already plenty of PR buzz about the film – we wait to see if it is all worth it!

TRISHNA trailer: Freida Pinto in Anurag Kashyap’s film

Music director Amit Trivedi will be making his debut as an actor in Michael Winterbottom’s (director of Angelina Jolie starrer A Mighty Heart) film Trishna, which is based in India

Music director Amit Trivedi’s trippy music, starting with Anurag Kashyap’s Dev.D, has got all big names of Bollywood queuing up at his door. But coming up with interesting tunes is not all this man does. Surprise, surprise, he will soon be making his debut as an actor in Michael Winterbottom’s film Trishna, which is based in India, just like Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire was. Amit has been roped in to do this one thanks to his mentor Anurag Kashyap, who will also play a role in the film, which stars Freida Pinto and Riz Ahmed. Both Amit and Anurag are cast more or less as themselves (or atleast when they began) – struggling music composer and struggling film director respectively. Anurag’s wifey Kalki Koechlin will also be a part of the film’s cast we heard. We know that Amit is a very shy guy in real life and it will be interesting to see him on the big screen sharing screen space with his mentor. At the shoot of the film, Kashyap was seen pulling Amit’s leg more than once about the acting gig. Will Amit’s acting chops have the same punch as his music does? Now that will be decided only when the film releases, but the young music director sure was having a great time bonding with the cast and crew during the shoot. We only hope that Amit will continue to make his unique brand of music in his newly acquired studio, and not succumb to the lure of the arc lights and the clap of that board.

The actor who is still known as Latika to many has an eye on Bollywood, even though B-town gave her the cold shoulder…

Slumdog Millionaire actress Freida Pinto is going that extra mile these days to express her so-called ‘inherent’ love for Bollywood. Usually when she is asked about her favourite movie, without thinking twice the actor names Sholay as one she can watch any time of the day. Now this really looks like the actress is trying to drum up offers back home by portraying her love for Bollywood. But excess love can be detrimental to your career, Frieda, and the evidence is there for all to see. And our gal landed in a soup for just this. An intelligent journo twisted the question a bit and asked her who wrote Sholay. A clueless Frieda could have gracefully accepted that she doesn’t know the answer, but she instead preferred making a fool of herself. According to her it isn’t Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar who burnt midnight oil and wrote the story for the cult film. Very confidently, she replied to the question with: “JP Dutta” and then held her breath when she realised it was the wrong answer. “This could land me in trouble, isn’t it?” she wanted to know. Well, now that you have learnt your lesson, Frieda, you may want to be a little more careful before playing the self-promotion game. And if we had to modify a dialogue from your favourite film, we would say, “Iss media ke saamne kuch mat bolna, Basanti…errr…Freida.”

Written and directed by British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom,  (best known for the Angelina Jolie-Irrfan Khan starrer A Mighty Heart), this film is based on the 1891 novel Tess of the d’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. The film is co-produced by Anurag Kashyap and Amit Trivedi has composed the music. It will be premiering at the Toronto Film Festival.

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It seems Freida Pinto is trying hard to prove her detractors wrong. The Slumdog Millionaire actor will finally be seen in an ‘Indian’ avatar in Trishna. She plays an autorickshaw driver’s daughter who falls in love with a rich man’s son. While she had played an Indian girl in her debut film, she then went on to play an American in Woody Allen’s film You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and a Palestinian in Miral. That didn’t go down well with a certain section of the media, who claimed she should do more ‘Indian’ roles. Poor Freida. Here she is, one Indian actor who has successfully crossed over to Hollywood and not stuck playing only Indian characters, and she is criticised for it. If she had been playing only Indian characters, she will be panned for not being able to go global. Oh, come on! If Antonio Banderas from Spain, Hugh Jackman from Australia, Charlize Theron from South Africa and Michelle Yeoh, a Malaysian actor from Hong Kong can play Americans, then why not Freida? Give the girl a break.

Apparently the Slumdog Millionaire actor wants to do a comedy film

After doing serious films so far, Freida Pinto has a comedy film with beau Dev Patel on her wishlist.In a recent interview she said, “Maybe we’ll do a comedy some day. Dev is so good that I can just sit and laugh watching him.” It would be interesting to see the two in a typical David Dhawan film. What do you think?

How do we know Freida Pinto? As the girl who went to the Oscars with Slumdog Millionaire, right? That is, after all, her only claim to fame. Who remembers her Woody Allen film? So it is no surprise at all that she recalls that old experience of wining and dining at the Academy Awards once again on Simi Selects India’s Most Desirable. So there she was in Hollywood, with her first film being the talk of the town – she was dining with Kurt Russell and with Cher, patting John Stewart’s shoulder and socialising with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. She was living every girl’s dream. So how did she cope with this sudden change in her life? Wasn’t she starstruck? “Of course I was very much star stuck, anybody in my position would have been star stuck. I had to train myself to be calm and composed, if at all saw Angelina Jolie walking down somewhere. It is difficult because it’s like living in a fairy tale. All the biggest celebrities whom you have adored and been a fan of are in front of you. I was feeling like Alice in Wonderland. I mean I never thought I will meet Mick Jagger.” When asked what was the conversation between her and Mick, Freida says, “I didn’t say anything, see this is the thing, I don’t know what to say. I just get very nervous and kind of retreat into my shell. I just said I love your music and that’s about it and I went.” Better luck next time, Freida.

Simi Selects India’s Most Desirable airs Sundays at 10pm on Star World

If you thought only Bollywood folks had strange ways of coming up with titles for their films, think again! UK-based filmmaker Michael Winterbottom who has directed Freida Pinto in Trishna, was inspired by something Indian. Our source says, “Winterbottom didn’t have a title when he came to India. He got the name after he ate at a very popular seafood restaurant called Trishna in south Mumbai.”Apart from this eating joint, there are quite a few restaurants in the city – Leopold Cafe, Rajdhani and Mahesh Lunch Home – that are a must visit among the tourist crowd. Freida’s Trishna, which will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2011, is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles. It is a tragic love story between the son of a rich estate developer and the daughter of a poor autorickshaw driver. It stars Riz Ahmed, an actor of Pakistani origin, opposite Freida. The title Trishna was first used in Bollywood way back in 1978 for a Sippy Films production starring Shashi Kapoor, Sanjeev Kumar and Rakhee. It is a drama revolving around an accidental murder. In fact, in 1984 there was an Indian TV series called Trishna – an adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Strangely, none of the three projects have anything in common, except the Indian connection. Freida has wowed the world with her beauty but when it comes to acting the young actor has a long way to go. We hope the portrayal of a tragic lover wins her some accolades for her acting as well.

When we first heard that Freida Pinto had shed her girl-next-door image and actually gone topless for an American magazine, we were shocked. Weren’t you, too? Why in the world would she do that? Then we got thinking, and we realised that it’s not so shocking, after all. Freida first burst onto the scene with the Academy Award-winning Slumdog Millionaire. And look how she capitalised on that! Remember how, till the film released, you thought she was the heroine? Then you went to watch it, and waited and waited for more than two-thirds of the movie for her to come onscreen. That didn’t stop her from dressing up in designer wear and attending almost every prestigious film festival she could get invited to. All that networking got her Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger and Julian Schnabel’s Miral, but she failed to impress both critics and audiences with her performances in either film. Even Bollywood has not come calling. Buzz is that B-towners are not very appreciative of this pretty lady’s histrionics, so no one’s really interested in offering her any roles here. Freida’s career has not taken off the way you would expect, considering that her first film took her to the Oscars. After her first splash, she is hardly making even a ripple nowadays. Now, are you still surprised with her dare bare act? Definitely not when we remind you that her next film, the Hollywood biggie, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, releases on August 5. What can we say? We just hope it all works out for Freida and she can put her shirt back on. We ain’t betting ours on that one!