Indian actress Anushka Sharma never much cared for movies. But her performances in five Bollywood features have won her critical plaudits and thousands of fans

By the time she was 15, Anushka Sharma was a financially independent model and still a straight-A student. Given how mean teenage girls can be, you’d think that might have made life tough in school

If it did, Sharma never noticed. “I had no interest in anything other than working. I was so focused. Even when I was modeling, I still wouldn’t miss classes. All my friends were bunking off, watching movies or what­ever, but I maintained my attendance. It was just single-focus, single-track mind. I wasn’t even interested in boys. I did have a boyfriend, but I didn’t pay him any attention, so he ran away.”

The main reason for her drive, she says, was that she knew how lucky she was to have parents who were willing to trust her. “They were always very supportive, which isn’t necessarily expected from most Indian families with a profession like modeling – parents would be scared,” she says. “But because I was a good student all along, they put their faith in me and let me do what I wanted to do.”

What she wanted to do was model. That’s all. But within six months of moving to Mumbai at the age of 17, she had landed her first film role, in 2008’s Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, opposite Bol­lywood icon Shahrukh Khan. (Some perspective: Khan was, that same year, named one of the 50 most powerful people in the world in Newsweek.) For most young actors, it would’ve been a nerve-racking experience. Not for Sharma.

“I never wanted to be an actor,” she says. “Really. Never. When I was growing up in Bangalore, I didn’t really watch any movies – in any language. But because I was so unaware and unaffected by Hindi films I treated it like another modeling job. That was my attitude. I was sort of naive, but I think that worked in my favor, because I wasn’t scared. I had nothing to lose. If I’d always wanted to be an actor, that pressure would’ve made me too nervous. Instead I was just concentrating on saying my lines.” She said them pretty well, receiving a Best Actress nomination at the Filmfare Awards – “India’s version of the Oscars.”

She’s currently promoting her fifth movie, Ladies vs Ricky Bahl, which sees her reunited with Ranveer Singh, the co-star of one of her most successful films, Band Baaja Baaraat. She seems to have settled into her non-choice of career. “I feel, today, like this is what I do best; I can’t write songs, I can’t rap, I can’t sing, but I know I can act, and I enjoy doing it. I think my life path was just structured to make me an actor. But I didn’t see it coming.”

She’s also lightened up a bit, relaxed that focus. “When I was doing my second film, I thought: ‘What am I doing with my life? I’m young. I know I have to work hard, but at the same time I have to enjoy my life.’ I live a lot more now.”

Her lack of drama training, she says, hasn’t been a hindrance. “I’ve come to realize that if I’m over-instructed, or have too much information before I approach a scene, I mess it up. I can’ t think too much about what I’m doing. It’s not that I don’t prepare for roles; when I’m doing a film I try to take in as much as I can from the writer and the director. But I’m not someone who, if they’re play­ing some downtrodden, underprivileged person, is going to go and live in a hut to experience that life.” Most of her research involves observing, she says. “I’m always staring at people. Sometimes they think something’s wrong with me.”

She’s managed to avoid much of the flak that model-turned-ac­tors often receive. In part, she explains, because of smart choices of roles. But also because “I’m not the most beautiful girl in the Indian film industry by any means. There are some girls with perfect faces who are absolutely spectacular. I know I don’t have a perfect face, but I use that imperfection, I use those unconventional looks and I try to do things which are more performance-oriented. I can’t be a damsel in distress – in real life or on screen.”

What she hasn’t managed to avoid, so far, is the attention of gos­sip-hungry tabloids. She’s constantly linked with her co-stars – in­cluding Singh. “It’s very frustrating,” she says. “Journalism has be­come very fickle. One day it’s something, the next day it’s something else. News is meant to be unbiased reporting, right? Are people only interested in gossip? Do I feel like slapping them when they write this nonsense? I do. I curse them. A lot,” she continues. For the first time, her calm poise shows signs of cracking. She quickly recovers. “But then, I’m an entertainer, and if what they’re reading about me entertains them, I guess that’s the price you pay.”