'When you are starting out, everything is a battle'

Sobhita Dhulipala is gearing up for the release of her web series, ‘The Night Manager Part 2’. This year, she was also seen in a pivotal role in Mani Ratnam’s magnum opus, ‘Ponniyin Selvan II’. In a new interview, the actor revealed that she was called ‘not gori (fair)’ and not ‘pretty enough’ on her face during her ad auditions.

Sobhita played the role of Vaanathi in ‘Ponniyin Selvan I’ and ‘Ponniyin Selvan II’ and was praised for her performance. Earlier this year, she was seen as Anil Kapoor’s girlfriend in ‘The Night Manager Part 1’ and will now return in the same role in the second season. However, things were not that bright for her during her audition days.

“When you are starting out, everything is a battle. I am not from the movies. I remember in my ad auditions, I was told many times that I was not ‘gori’ (fair) enough. There were these things that you see at the ad level, where I was told to my face that I am not pretty enough. Not that I was dejected,” she told a famed entertainment news agency in an interview.

She said that instead of brooding over it, she found ways to be more creative to find a place in the industry. She added, “That’s when you start thinking outside the box instead of waiting for a brilliant, successful commercial filmmaker to ‘discover’ you. What is in my control is to go for auditions and give my 100 percent.”

Sobhita recently addressed queries about her limited screen time in ‘Ponniyin Selvan II’ and explained how she makes the best of what she gets. She said in an interview with another popular entertainment news portal, “From the beginning, I didn’t have characters that were very large in their screen time. So, it taught me to use the titbits to bring punch into that.”

Sobhita has worked in Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu films. She also has a Hindi film ‘Sitara’ and an American film ‘Monkey Man’ in the pipeline.