Diana Penty made her debut with Homi Adajania’s Cocktail alongside Deepika Padukone and Saif Ali Khan. The actress is now ready for next release, Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi and shares her journey from a model to an actor and says is glad her sophomore film itself gave her a chance to break the mold and find her feet in Bollywood, where she is now in a happy space.
Looking back at her career, the actress told IANS in an interview, “Cocktail was the perfect debut but I knew that with it came a certain standard that I had to try and live up to moving forward. So I guess there was a certain pressure to choose the right script and do the right kind of film. At that time, I was very new to the industry.”
“I didn’t know too many people and didn’t have anyone to really guide me. It took me a while to figure out how to proceed, what direction to take – whether I should be doing a small part in a big film or an interesting role in a smaller film. Whether to follow my intuition or blindly follow what people were telling me to do, whether to stick to stories I genuinely believed in, or do everything that came my way. It was indeed a confusing time.”
But four years after Cocktail came out, “Happy Bhag Jaayegi” happened. “When I came across Happy Bhag Jayegi, I knew it would be the perfect second film for me. It was a funny, yet sweet story and it gave me the opportunity to play a character that was remarkably different from Meera. Since people had already labelled me as the shy, girl next door, I thought this would be a great way to give them something they weren’t expecting.
Now as Happy Phir Bhag Jayegi, which also features Sonakshi Sinha, gears up for release next month, Diana feels excited about how the film industry has been going through a “remarkable” change for women in the last couple of years.