Deepika Padukone Is Charting New Horizons With Her Self-Care Journey

There’s a quiet resilience to Deepika Padukone. It comes through with her impressive body of work that she’s carefully crafted through the years, playing disparate roles that embody who the modern Indian woman is. (“being vulnerable is powerful,” she tells me emphatically).

It comes through when she talks passionately about embarking on an entrepreneurial journey with the launch of her selfcare brand, 82°E, and when she discusses how important it is to build a self-sustaining ecosystem to safeguard her mental health

Throughout her career in sports, fashion, and films, Padukone has operated from a place of curiosity and nonjudgment; she's started hard conversations about mental health, cracked open taboos, and has looked for connection and resonance everywhere she can find it. "I've always been quietly confident, and it stems from self-preservation. I don't find the need to make a splash with everything I do. I enjoy doing things that feel organic and authentic," she says.

The actor straddles two different worlds gracefully; she effortlessly made the Cannes red carpet her playground as a jury member for the prestigious film festival earlier in the year. She's been spotted at Louis Vuitton runway shows worldwide as their global ambassador (since May this year) and also became the ambassador for Cartier in October 2022. She visited Chinna Chinna Ikkam village of Tiruvallur district, about 80 kilometers from Chennai, as she faced six women in pink saris, all Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA), to discuss in detail the numerous mental health issues prevalent in their communities - postpartum depression among mothers, suicidal tendencies and stigma-induced trauma amid people with disabilities.