Disha Patani breaks free with ‘Malang'

Bollywood star, who plays a woman living on the edge in the film, talks about

A gym is an unusual place to be sized up for an acting job, but Bollywood star Disha Patani, who plays one of the leads in the upcoming Hindi romantic thriller ‘Malang’, was being inadvertently auditioned while she lifted those heavy weights.

“Mohit sir [director Mohit Suri] and I go the same gym in Mumbai and in there he saw an independent girl who knows who she is during workouts. He felt I am someone who can handle life and is in a zone where she is learning more about herself,” said Patani in an interview with Gulf News tabloid!.

In the Goa-set revenge saga ‘Malang’, also starring Aditya Roy Kapoor, Anil Kapoor and Kunal Kemmu, Patani is on call to play Sara, a woman in the throes of a quarter-life crisis. There’s more to her character than meets the eye. The film revolves around a series of bizarre events that unfurl during a Christmas night in Goa and how four characters find their lives intertwined following an event that happened five years ago.

“Girls are always shown as positive in films ... Personally, I love negative roles or roles with shades of grey in them,” said Patani, who counts ‘Gone Girl’ as one of her favourite films.

We caught up with the actress, who was last seen with Salman Khan in ‘Bharat’, to speak about ‘Malang’, her quest for a beach-ready body and her rising career in Bollywood where she has signed on a new film with Khan...

Tell us about your role in ‘Malang’ and the film?