Anushka Sharma On How To Succeed On Your Own Terms

Demanding more from herself than the industry does, Anushka Sharma is changing what’s possible for Bollywood’s leading ladies.

- Cheryl Ann Couto

Growing up is delicate business and when you have to do it in the headlines, you’d best have on good quality shin guards. Anushka Sharma is a woman now. The girl I met five years ago, chattering at top speeds, mouthy and indignant, frenetic with ambition, is gone. In her place is a serious, measured woman, consumed by her work and passionately building a dream. Where did the road diverge?

“I used to be very anxious,” Sharma says. She’s over the phone with me from Amsterdam, where she’s shooting for Imtiaz Ali’s new film (tentatively titled The Ring) with Shah Rukh Khan. “I started modelling when I was 15, and I was acting by 19. It’s a very raw time to be subjected to rejection and people’s opinions about everything you do. This, while you’re trying to wrap your mind around this new work, this new world that you know nothing about. Once I began to understand what was making me anxious, I wasn’t anxious anymore.”

It helps that the 28-year-old is mad about her job. She’s finished shooting three films—Sultan, Karan Johar’s star-spangled Ae Dil Hai Mushkil and her second home production, Phillauri—this year alone. Her schedule for The Ring, will take care of the rest of 2016. And while her brother, Karnesh Sharma, pretty much runs their production house Clean Slate Films, Sharma’s is the creative vision and the brand muscle. Her role involves attending meetings, taking the time to develop ideas with new talent and putting together the right creative teams for the projects. “My involvement with cinema is on another level right now. We’re creating content we believe in, pitching it to studios and waiting for multiple projects to be sanctioned. It’s such a rush.”