Please forgive me. I am in a lot of pain. I have hurt my back. Shall do tomorrow. Promise.’

It’s an unexpected text message from the reigning diva of Bollywood. After five back-to-back hits, Katrina Kaif could well have donned the snooty superstar avatar. Doing the rounds of television channels to promote her latest hit New York, and in the middle of shooting for yet another film with her lucky hero Akshay Kumar, what’s one more request for an interview from a print reporter she’s never met? Well, it turns out Kaif is refreshingly different. She even picks up her cell phone and acknowledges the first texted request. Sweet-talking secretaries/managers who dahling you before developing amnesia are missing entirely from the Hong Kong-born London-bred model-turned star’s retinue.

In the middle of shooting a “difficult dance number” for De Dana Dhan with Akshay before she leaves for her mid-July birthday vacation with family back in London, the most googled person in India offers me a phone interview. She will call after pack up.

The dance number exacts a back injury and the text message follows. But Kaif is as good as her word. Ms Manners is hard to come by in tinsel town and such unexpected courtesy is enough to make one do a jig.

At 24, Katrina Kaif is a surprise package all right. She is the outsider who couldn’t speak Hindi, the fresh-faced teenager who debuted in 2003 with the much-hyped Amitabh Bachchan-led clunker Boom directed by Bombay Boys director Kaizad Gustad and the star who pipped Aishwarya Rai to the post for the very valuable if mindless honour of being the new face of Barbie. Not to mention the recent line up of hits such as New York, Singh is Kinng, Partner, Namastey London, Welcome and Race. Quite simply, she is the outsider who outflanked the competition.

“There is no guarantee how a film will turn out. No predictability. A film that you may feel is not so good turns out to be a big hit, or the one that everyone thinks will do well, doesn’t. I go by instinct and then pray and hope that the film does well,” Kaif intones with the lingering trace of a foreign accent. Indeed, it was her accent that landed her her turning point role as Jasmeet (Jazz) in Namastey London.

If she is level headed it is because she has seen both sides of luck. “I am very grounded because the journey has been progressive. I did not become a big star overnight. I was working here but did not know anyone. It was a gradual climb,” Kaif points out.

An elder sister (she is sandwiched between three older and three younger sisters, and there is an eighth sibling, a brother who is the youngest) initially accompanied her to India but left soon after. She learnt to navigate the shifting sands of modelling and films on unknown shores.

“Hold your head up and keep moving. (Designer) Ana Singh, whom I knew very well, would accompany me. I was very clear about what I wanted to do. It was very challenging, moving about in taxis, finding out where to go, but it was a wonderful time. I knew I wanted to be a model. I did not know enough of films or the industry. But it is a natural process in the industry that models get offered films. You make your choice,” she says.

Ana Singh recalls babysitting three people on Boom’s location in Dubai. A friend of Boom producer Ayesha Shroff, she took care of Shroff’s two pre-teen children and 17-year-old Kaif who had come from London to successfully audition for the film. “I was the first person Katrina met. She was very, very young, and very, very vulnerable. And very, very nice,” recalls the affable Singh, puffing away in her studio.“Our industry can be very isolating for a newcomer until they begin to belong,” Singh explains. “She did a lot of modelling work. I did whatever I could do to help. She would sit in the house with me all the time in the early days.” Singh even took her to her own mentor, marketing man Pradip Guha who was associated with the Miss India contest. But Kaif had a foreign passport, and couldn’t take part in the pageant.

But then, as Singh points out, destiny had other things in store for her. Katrina became a successful model, and even did three films in the South, two in Telugu and one in Malayalam (Balaram vs Taradas) with Mammootty. The early days had her looking fairly voluptuous. Ana Singh recalls her 18th birthday in Dubai. “She still had a lot of puppy fat and loved to eat. All I did was to feed her face. Her favourite is sushi,” she says, smiling gently.

Kaif had a blink-and-miss role in Sarkar, which she calls her first Hindi film. “I was very nervous when I gave my first shot, opposite Abhishek Bachchan.”

Today, industry insiders say she earns Rs 2 crore for a film. “Katrina is very much in demand. She shares the crown with Kareena Kapoor, having given a string of hits. Both are number 1,” says trade analyst Amod Mehra. “But I don’t think she has overtaken Kareena because she has not delivered any great histrionics yet.”

Singh and glamour photographer Atul Kasbekar, who runs a celebrity management company, Bling, both speak of the X factor that sets one pretty face apart from the also-rans. Kaif has that in plenty. “X factor is that magnetic encashable appeal that gives an edge to what could have been just another pretty face,” Kasbekar explains. It was Kasbekar who first shot Kaif for the inaugural Kingfisher calendar in 2003. “She was not in today’s swimsuit shape. But there was a nice shot of her in a bikini on a horse. Shah Rukh Khan’s picture was in front of Katrina’s and everyone asked who the girl was,” remembers Kasbekar.

Kasbekar got the impression that Kaif had not done much modelling in England. “She had very basic pictures. But she has a very strong work ethic. She was in a dance class where she had to learn Kathak for 7-8 hours. The guruji said no way can you do this. She was dying, but she did it!” Along with dance, she took Hindi lessons every day, sometimes coached by actor Salman Khan.

Refusing to come on record, a film industry veteran whispers that the Kingfisher picture had caught Khan’s attention. “He wanted to know who that pretty thing was. But to give her her due, Katrina at least was always crazy about him.”

Ana Singh remembers hearing the news about them. “Salman is a childhood friend. We did our first film together, Maine Pyaar Kiya. Out of the blue, I heard she had become friends with him. I went Whaaaat! But I was very happy for them,” she says with obvious affection.

Kaif has made it a rule to never publicly discuss her relationship with Khan, saying she does not comment on personal matters. They are supposed to have met at a party thrown by Khan’s sister. During the black buck controversy when Khan was in a jail in Jodhpur — he was charged with illegally shooting the protected deer — she regularly flew down to visit him.

Not that she’ll talk about it. Kaif has perfected the art of sidestepping a direct answer with a disarming smile. Khan, on the other hand, is more vocal.

Kat got the cream

In an appearance in Dus Ka Dum, a television game show anchored by him, Kaif denied she had problems with rivals such as Bipasha Basu or any actress, and that misunderstandings were created by their boyfriends. “In that case, you will blame me even for your being born,” cackled Khan, whose sense of humour in public has often led to guessing games that the pair is married.

PRETTY WOMAN: (Top) Katrina Kaif during the shooting of New York; (above) with Akshay Kumar in Welcome

“An unknown entity needs someone’s backing. It’s very difficult to screw up when you have a super star backing you,” says the industry veteran waspishly, attributing Kaif’s success to her boyfriend’s status. But even he echoes Kasbekar that Katrina has worked her tail off. “Katrina has risen after a struggle,” agrees Amod Mehra. “In comparison, Kareena was a star born, with a big launch and the Kapoor tag.”

Her directors are equally effusive. “She is a very keen worker,” stresses director Prakash Jha who signed her for his forthcoming film Rajneeti, rumoured to be inspired by Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s life. Jha, known for his hard-hitting political films based in the Bihar heartland where he comes from, took Kaif in a make up-free role that has her speaking the local dialect.

“In signing my cast I go by my gut feeling. She is extremely honest. I told her I had this film and would like to work with her. I didn’t have to convince her at all. She understood the character,” says Jha.

Wasn’t Rajneeti a bit out of her league? Kaif has tasted commercial success and now wants to prove her acting chops. “You need to maintain your passion for cinema. If you are passionate about something you will want to do better. If you really love and relate to cinema you will want to act in a film like this,” she says firmly. And what a lineup of actors she will work with — Naseeruddin Shah, Ajay Devgan and Ranbir Kapoor.

Clearly, she has come a long way from those days when she was “very quiet, subdued and shy” — words that Kaif uses to describe herself as a young girl. “It was a bit of an initial shock to those who knew me when I got into acting.”

But for all her baby face vulnerability, she is capable of standing her own ground. Kaif, after spending some of her initial years in Hawaii, has travelled across the world. Her parents, Mohammed Kaif, a Kashmiri Muslim, and lawyer mother Suzanne, a Britisher and Harvard graduate, divorced when Kaif was very young. “She has her feet firmly on the ground, is very levelheaded and has been that way from the beginning,” says a model coordinator who has seen Kaif from the early days.

Kaif has gone on record to say that she gave herself time to make it in Mumbai till her budget of Rs 4 lakh ran out. “As she said on a chat show, her primary goal as an actor and model was to secure a very large family, that she was doing all of this for a living. Today she has homes in London and Mumbai,” says the coordinator. Family is important for Kaif — and her joy at being with the entire family for the first time in nine years for her birthday is evident in her voice. “One of my sisters stays in the United States, and my brother travels. So someone or the other is always missing,” she says.

The family has always stayed close-knit. “Since I have six sisters, we didn’t have time for other friends. We were always in a group; we’d stick together. We slept three to a room. So when people talk and gossip about imaginary personal details, I feel that’s a bit odd. They are not privy to everything.”

The actor stresses that she feels like a “normal 24-year-old” — who likes to unwind and relax at home on Sundays. Her friends include Salman Khan’s sister Arpita at whose party she first met him.

Kaif is closely involved with her mother’s foundation Relief Project India, which supports and nurtures underprivileged children. She was the second client to be signed by Matrix, the celebrity management company, when it was launched some years ago. “Katrina is very selective about the brands she endorses. On an average, she turns down 10 endorsement offers every month as she believes the brand fit has to be right. Brands are thus willing to pay a premium for the association,” says Sandhya Ramachandran, who manages her business affairs at Matrix.

While the company won’t comment on her brand value in figures, an ad industry source says Katrina’s endorsements are worth around $1 million for a one or two-year contract. And for appearing at events such as the IPL, Barbie and Audi Q5 launch, the fees range between Rs 50 lakh and Rs 75 lakh (the higher end if the events are televised). Currently, Kaif has signed two film deals with both UTV and Studio 18 for an undisclosed sum. Not bad going for a star who has rarely dubbed for her films.

“She has come into her own. Her edge over the others is her simplicity and her professionalism. Biggest surprise? That she can actually speak Hindi,” chuckles designer Singh.

It’s been hard work all the way. But the pretty star is not about to get uppity. “You cannot take success for granted. I may crib about long hours, doing make-up and hair, and go ‘aaahhhh’ (groans) but then the gratefulness factor kicks in. So many would give everything to be in my shoes,” she says.

Destiny’s Child is Kat Woman today. Purrrr