For someone still in her 20s, Tamannaah Bhatia works a lot. In the city to promote the first South Indian edition of the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards, Tamannaah is also shooting for a song for Sreenivas Pellakonda’s new film, as well as for her role in the upcoming bi-lingual Oopiri. But she still insists that she loves doing the “regular” things. “I love spending time with my family, and I love doing the regular things — going to watch movies at theatres, shopping on the road side,” she says, adding, “But to be honest, I’ve not really done much of ‘chilling’ because I’ve been working very hard.”
A believable fact, considering she’s been working as an actress since she was 13, with her first film — Chand Sa Roshan Chehra, which she admits wasn’t her best effort, but which led her to Tollywood. “I was very young and was doing a lot of commercials and even did a Hindi film which was pretty much a non starter,” Tamannaah says, “After I got my first Telugu offer, it became like a circuit — one film led to another and I just stayed on.” After doing the commercially successful Happy Days in 2012, she was on her way to fulfilling her childhood dream. “It started off as one of those things kids say, ‘I want to become a doctor, I want to become an actress’,” she says, “At that age you say those things but don’t actually mean it, but in my case I started taking up theatre. My interest propelled my career, but it was also a lot of luck because the right opportunities came my way.”
Starring in multiple languages helped her along, something she picked up early. “I picked up Tamil and Telugu in the third or fourth year of my career,” she explains, “The film can be in any language, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu… but for me it should excite me as an actor. As long as that happens I don’t really choose it on the merit of the language, but on the project itself.”
Her friendship with fellow actress Kajal Aggarwal is also much-talked about, and she says actresses can be friends too even if they’re competing with each other. “I get along very well with Kajal and we meet on a more social level as well. So you can form friendships as well without baggage, if you really want to. In our case it happened because we had a very similar career path as well.”
After her role in Baahubali, which gave her and the South Indian film industry huge recognition, she says Tollywood is finally being recognised. “The South has always been a very important film industry, even in the world. So we’re really excited about IIFA coming here. What I’m most excited about is that Baahubali has been nominated in pretty much every category.”
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