Pic by Gajanan Dudhalkar

Anushka Sharma is on a roll — and she’s determined to make sure it stays that way. The young star has just delivered a super-hit with her smart performance as Shruti, the ambitious wedding planner from Janakpuri, in Band Baaja Baaraat. That’s taken her two-year, three-film record to two super-hits and one moderate run. No wonder, Bollywood’s cast her as its latest lucky charm and is hoping that her good fortune will rub off on her just-released film Patiala House with Akshay Kumar.

Anushka, of course, is “very happy” with her success. But this is one 22-year-old star who doesn’t get swayed by all the hype. She makes no bones about her ambitions. But she’s also clear that she’ll cut out her own path to success.

“I’m super-ambitious but my ambitions and the way I do things are probably different from the way things are expected to be,” she says. And no, don’t read that as “big-headedness”, cautions Anushka.

Much of Anushka’s character in Patiala House was inspired after the director met her in person

It’s certainly been a dream run so far for the peppy actress, who made her debut sharing the screen with none other than Shah Rukh Khan in Aditya Chopra’s Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi in December 2008. But if her debut film rode on SRK’s super-stardom, her latest strike with Band Baaja Baaraat is even sweeter as it’s come in a film without any big stars where she paired off with newcomer Ranveer Singh.

No wonder, then, that the calls and offers are pouring in for Anushka. She’s even signed up a couple of new films though she’s “not allowed to talk” about them yet. But she emphatically insists that she won’t rush into a mad signing spree.

The absence of a star cast was no deterrent to the youngster scoring a hit with Band Baaja Baaraat

Instead, she’s pacing her career. “I want to be in the space very soon where I’m the most sought-after actress. I want the best films and the best directors to want to work with me,” asserts the star, who’s bubbling with confidence. And, she’s willing to work patiently towards that goal.

For now, she’s focusing on Patiala House. Set in London, the film centres on an inter-generational conflict between the father-son pair of Rishi Kapoor and Akshay Kumar. Kapoor plays the dominating Punjabi father to Kumar’s dutiful son, who bows to his father’s wishes and sacrifices his ambition of playing cricket for England. That’s till Anushka as the nosy neighbour Simran appears on the scene and acts as a catalyst for — well, you can guess the rest.

The model-turned actress recently walked the ramp for Manish Malhotra in Mumbai

“When talent goes unrecognised, it really hurts me — maybe because I am an artiste myself. So Patiala House’s story made me feel for the film’s characters. That’s why I wanted to do it. And my role was really exciting too,” says Anushka.

Actually, much of her character as Simran was fleshed out after Patiala House’s director Nikhil Advani met her for the first time. “Nikhil tells me that after he met me, he told the writer, ‘There’s a bit of Anushka that I want to add to the character’, which was really flattering,” she recounts.

And what part would that be? “That I talk a lot and that I’m really random and sometimes say things that aren’t meant to hurt people but they come across like that because I am completely moonh-phat [blunt],” she admits.

As for the fact that she’s playing yet another Punjabi girl after Rab Ne... and Band Baaja..., she says: “When you’re completely new, the industry and the audience only know you from your first film. Everybody thought I was a Punjabi. I’m a Pahadi actually, which is really quite the opposite. But I’m happy that I’ve been able to convince people I’m Punjabi.”

Anushka shared screen space with Shahid Kapur in Badmaash Company

Actually, Anushka’s served up a pretty good screen mix so far. If she’s worked with superstars Shah Rukh and Akshay Kumar, she’s also been paired with a younger star like Shahid Kapur in Badmash Company (her second film) and now with a newcomer like Singh too. At another level, she’s been directed by the reclusive Chopra and more recently by Nikhil Advani in Patiala House besides having worked with first-time directors like Parmeet Sethi (Badmash Company) and Maneesh Sharma (Band Baaja...).

Her directors are certainly all praise for her skills. Advani cast her in Patiala House because he was impressed by the way she held her own against SRK in her first film. He says: “Anushka’s a spontaneous actor. Very often, I used to think she was not prepared for her scenes. But once she came on camera, she just pulled it off. She has no fear of improvisation. Plus she’s hardworking and extremely funky.”

Band Baja’s director Maneesh, who was the first person to audition her when he was assistant director on Rab Ne..., and who’s become a buddy ever since, too says: “She’s very focused, very ambitious and very righteous. There’s no malice in her and she’s way too honest.”

The actress made a dream debut with Shah Rukh Khan in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi

As an actor, Maneesh says that while Anushka processes information from the script and her director, “she doesn’t like to live with a script too long but believes in giving an instinctive take”. What’s more, whether she’s performing with actors as varied as Shah Rukh, Vinay Pathak or Singh, Maneesh says: “I’ve never seen her falter. She knows how to make her own space in the frame.”

The tall and slender heroine isn’t afraid of making her space in the film world on her own terms either. Says Anushka: “I’ve always signed films that I really believe in. If that means that I’m not doing too much work, that’s fine by me because it’s the only way I understand how to steer my career in the industry.”

Indeed, she attributes her success to her “patience and willingness to wait for the right project”. For instance, after a grand debut in Rab Ne..., unlike most newcomers, she didn’t succumb to the “pressure” of signing a lot of films.

“I could have gotten caught up into believing that since I’m new I need to do everything that comes my way so that I’m more visible. It’s what everybody told me but I wasn’t convinced. I really did think that if everybody is seeing me in the beginning, they have no opinion on me. So I’m making an opinion every time I come out whether it’s in a film or appearance or an ad and I want to be choosing the right work,” she says.

The fact that she didn’t have a film background was a factor too — her father is in the army and the former model from Bangalore had lived all her life in south India before she moved to Mumbai at 18.

“For others, there are people who can lift them up even if things aren’t going well. Nobody’s going to do that for me. My father is an army officer, all he can give me is emotional support. I’m here on my own so I have to make decisions that suit me best,” she asserts.

Anushka is determined to give it her all as an actor now “I’m here just for the acting, there’s nothing else that excites me as much,” she says — but the fact is that she never started out wanting to be one. “I always wanted to be a model, never an actor” she recalls.

She grew up in Bangalore where she “lived in a very protected environment [of] a cantonment”. “At the same time, I was a very independent kid,” she says. Even then, she was a focused performer. So if it was exams, it was strictly study time; yet she had fun the rest of the school year. But throughout all this, she would watch ads on television and dream about being in them. The dream turned into reality with startling swiftness when at 15, she met fashion designer Prasad Bidapa.

“I just went to meet him thinking I’ll tell him that maybe I’ll start modelling when I turn 18. But he immediately said ‘I want you tomorrow for a show’,” she recounts. By 18, she’d moved to Mumbai doing ramp shows like the Lakme Fashion Week and modelling for brands like Whisper and Fiat Palio. And within six months of moving to Mumbai, she got an audition call from Yashraj Films — Aditya Chopra was scouting for a new face for Rab Ne...

“I didn’t want to go for it because I had a perception of Bollywood as this big bad world. I just went because my manager said, ‘Please stop thinking you’re too good, you may not even get it’,” she recalls.

Maneesh remembers her telling him as much at her first audition. “She was this striking and yet very real girl. There was something very non-filmi about her,” he recalls. At that first audition, Maneesh had her read lines from films like Dilwale Dil Le Jayenge. “It’s natural to perform a scene the way it’s been done in the film. But she added her own spin to it. For me, she was outstanding,” he says.

Chopra wanted him to audition her further and Maneesh decided to scout for more faces too at a fashion week in Delhi that Anushka was taking part in. So he went to Delhi and even got Anushka to act as his guide between shows.

“Anushka was actually helping me look at other girls. She was very spirited about it, giving me all this info on the girls with great honesty. At one point, I asked her, ‘You know if I like someone, she’ll be straight competition for you’ but she said if it has to happen, it will happen,” he recounts.

Two rounds of audition later, Anushka met Chopra, and the rest is history. Now, her three-film contract with Yashraj has ended with Band Baaja Baaraat but you can expect an announcement for a new film together very soon. Meanwhile, Anushka’s looking forward to taking a holiday and “rejuvenating” herself for the next phase of her career. And as Advani says: “This is just the beginning” for the young heroine.