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Vogue India

Who’s that girl: Shriswara

She plays Farhan’s wife in Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, and Irrfan Khan’s better half in her next. We’re curious

In director Rakeysh Mehra’s big release, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, you’ll spot a fresh face sharing screen space with Farhan Akhtar and Sonam Kapoor. And lest you forget her too soon, actress Shriswara (goes by first name only) will hit screens next month too, starring in crime-thriller D-Day opposite Irrfan Khan.

The Bollywood debutante tells Vogue how she bagged two consecutive big ticket releases sans industry contacts, the actor who inspired her to act, and why she wants to emulate Aamir Khan.

She knows exactly when the acting bug bit

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    That’s the year Shriswara decided she wanted to be an actor. “I’ve always liked performing in front of an audience, I used to dance. I always wanted to perform but acting didn’t click until I saw Dil Toh Paagal Hai that year. Shah Rukh [Khan] was my absolute favourite.”

She's got persuasive talent

It took some doing to persuade her conservative family to let her pursue a career in films. When studying in the US, she entered a pageant and won first runner-up. “That gave me some leeway to tell my family ‘See I have potential, you can trust me. This is something I can try’,” she says.

She'll do anything to get on camera

She first faced a camera during auditions for a negative role, playing a 50 year-old lady in a Hindi television soap. Not a role that a young actor starting out would usually opt for, but “I wanted to act”, she asserts. “At that time, I didn’t worry about things I should or shouldn’t do. For me it was more about ‘Can I pull off such a role?’ It was more about a challenge for me.” 

She literally knocked on wood

Shriswara went marching door to door, portfolio in hand, asking if they were casting. At Mehra’s office, she was shooed away, without so much as an email address to send her pictures to. But then, she narrates, “As I walked a few steps away, they called me back and gave me an email I.D. I went home, sent my pictures, and I actually got a call to come in and audition.”

She wants to use her fame for good

Protecting wildlife and the environment are two subjects she feels strongly about. “It bugs the absolute cr*p out of me when I see people pollute.” Whenever influential fame comes her way, she plans to leverage it to make a difference. Like Aamir Khan does. “When he did his show Satyamev Jayate, people sat up, listened and watched every Sunday,” she says, “I’d like to use whatever public appeal I have to get people to act.”

Fact check: Shriswara lived in Lucknow, before moving to the US and then to Mumbai. Her life there served as inspiration for her character Nafisa, a RAW agent’s wife in D-Day.

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