Want to treat my 40 as my 20: Rani

As she enters a new decade of life, the actor, who is coming back to the big screen after a hiatus of four years with Hichki, says she hopes to do more movies and wants to cherish the foundation years of her two-year-old daughter Adira with husband and filmmaker Aditya Chopra.

"I want to treat my 40 as my 20. And I want to do a lot of work... More and more movies. I want to enjoy bringing up Adira. It is going to be the most important years of her life, so I think it's going to be a really really nice decade," Rani told in an interview while she was here to promote Hichki.

The movie is about Naina Mathur, who has a nervous system disorder, Tourette Syndrome, that forces an individual to make involuntary repetitive movements or sounds. In a way, it takes forward Rani's knack for taking up roles which let the story take forefront over her stardom.

"Because for me, the story is that connect... Stories that are human, which have a strong emotional connect or the stories that connect with me or resonate with me as a person. I give more precedence to that."

"For me, it is important that the audience connects with the story or storyline, and when they connect with it, they connect with me and the character as well," she said.

In the past decade, Rani's filmography is mostly laced by projects like Dil Bole Hadippa!, No One Killed Jessica, Aiyyaa and Mardaani, where the woman carries the most weight of the film on her shoulders – a rare but gradually visible shift in Indian cinema.

Does she find it empowering?

"It's scary," she said, laughing, and then explained: "Because you have the whole film on your shoulders and it's quite a heavyweight... But empowering, yes, as for me, it's not important about the gender issues here that it's a male protagonist or female protagonist. I think it's about the story. It's about how well can you carry forward the story, how well you are able to carry the story on your shoulders."