Hope more Indians take chances in H’wood: Deepika

Though many big Bollywood stars may have featured in Hollywood films, but actor Deepika Padukone, set for her international feature debut, hopes more A-listers from India to now take the plunge in the west. Deepika features alongside Hollywood star Vin Diesel in the third instalment of xXx, titled xXx: The Return of Xander Cage.

When asked if more Bollywood stars should try their luck in Hollywood now, Deepika said, “I hope so, but I also feel different things excite different people. I have been offered roles in the past itself but I don’t think I was ready and I don’t think I was excited enough. “As an actor I don’t think I was ready for the challenge before. You have to look everything that you get as an opportunity. There is no role that’s too small or big. It is all about what you make of the opportunity,” Deepika said. 

Besides Deepika, Priyanka Chopra has created waves in Hollywood with her role on hit American TV series ‘Quantico’ and is making her feature film debut with Baywatch movie alongside Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron.

Irrfan is another actor from Bollywood, who has a successful career in the west having starred in films like Life of Pi, Jurassic World and the upcoming Tom Hanks-starrer, Inferno. Deepika wrapped the shoot of xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, last month.

During the movie’s shoot, the actor had chronicled her experiences on social media .Deepika feels xXx came to her at the right point in her career as she had been craving to do an action movie for a long time.

“It is not like it is a Hollywood film so you would do some different performance. As an actor, at the end of the day, you want to challenge yourself. You want to do different things,” she said. The actor said she didn’t find much difference between the working culture of Bollywood and Hollywood, except for the latter’s structured time schedule that the Hindi film industry lacks.

“They have a very structured timing which allow you weekends. I used to do grocery shopping, cooking and also my own laundry in Toronto. Everything else is same as Bollywood.

“There are similarities. The fact that I didn’t find anything glaringly different says a lot about Indian film industry. We have evolved as a industry - independent producers, big studios, the kind of movies we are making, its content and our basic work ethic.”