Sagarika Ghatge

Ask her about Shah Rukh Khan and there’s just a giggle on the other side of the phone, before Sagarika Ghatge says: “What can I say? He is so good. I was in Class VI when I saw Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. You can imagine...”

Yes, in real life, she is far removed from Preeti Sabarwal, who gets into a scrap with coach Kabir Khan on Day One of Chak De! India. Sagarika was a huge SRK fan long before she shared screen space with the superstar.

“He is truly the King,” she says. “He would go out of his way to give cues to all the 16 girls and even stand and observe where we were going wrong.”

Of all the girls who have made a mark in the Shimit Amin hockey hit, Sagarika’s — often referred to as ‘Mem’ in the movie — impact has been special.

Not bad for someone who didn’t even have a portfolio when she auditioned for Chak De! India. “I always wanted to get into the world of showbiz but my parents wanted me to finish my graduation first,” says the Mumbai girl, whose father Vijay Ghatge had produced and directed the Divya Dutta-starrer Shobhayatra in 2004.

But just her regular photographs were enough to make it to the second round of screening. “Then they wanted to find out whether I was up for the strict hockey regimen,” Sagarika reveals.

Having been an athlete all her childhood years in her boarding school, it was a cakewalk for the 20-year-old. “I had even played hockey in school because we could just about play anything at boarding school.”

And while other girls would give up every couple of weeks thanks to the rigorous training sessions — hockey in the morning, acting in the evening — Sagarika enjoyed every moment of it. “I can go back to that regimen right now, I miss it so much,” she says. “Acting was comparatively tougher because I had never done that before.”

But the captain of the Chandigarh state team who powered Team India to victory as striker number one in Chak De! India has chosen celluloid over sports. “It will be films, totally,” she says, with the quiet confidence that made her such an attractive debutante and prompted producers to queue up to sign “the girl who played Preeti”.