Risk-Taker of the Year: Katrina Kaif

Is it possible to be an unpredictable enigma yet come as close as a superstar ever can to their fans? With her brand-new venture, Katrina Kaif might just have cracked the code.

- Sneha Mankani

See how you’ve smoked out that brown liner on your upper lid? Just like that, but more intense,” she points out while precisely pantomiming a makeup trick she learned from her “scientist sister.” It was my barely-there morning eye makeup that subtly defines the eye, details of which only a true makeup buff would notice. And she did. The same fervour lingers through our chat in her sunlit home, as bright and colourful as the topic du jour: beauty.

It’s hard to pick a flaw when you look at Katrina Kaif. Sitting ramrod straight, comfortably makeup-free in her shower-fresh skin, bee-stung dewy lips and easy at-home athleisure, she is a determined ball of energy who cannot wait to share her take on beauty with the world—not by talk, but by action. Kay is what she’s named it, her very own makeup brand with which she’ll be making her entrepreneurial debut. “I wanted to give it its own identity instead of making it an eponymous brand. I want the product to shine and Kay to stand on its own.”

At 11am on Sunday, she’s already finished two meetings with the Kay crew (I come third) and there’s a long day of swatching, speaking and shooting ahead. Her calm demeanour hints that, for her, makeup is serious business. It wasn’t an overnight impulse; it goes way back, from her early days in Bollywood when ‘contouring’ seemed like a phenomenon, to today, when she can enter a beauty shop and blindly pick every single product to create a full face of makeup for every friend and family member.

LESSONS FROM BOLLYWOOD