When Sonakshi Sinha first saw Lootera, it took her a little while to realise that she was on the screen. This one movie shifted her career direction after appearing in masala blockbusters like Dabangg and Rowdy Rathore, and the actor still thinks fondly about it ten years later.
“I couldn’t believe it for the first time when I watched this film. I looked at the screen and felt I was not watching myself, but someone completely different. I met my character Paakhi for the first time, and that was a surreal feeling! A lot of my films, I can say ‘that’s me’, but when I watched Lootera, I was like who is this person? I was truly proud of myself and what we had made,” recalls the 36-year-old in an interview with Hindustan Times.
The second part of the movie, which was directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, was based on the 1907 short story The Last Leaf by author O. Henry. In it, Sinha played a sick woman whose life is changed when Ranveer Singh’s con artist shows up.
The actor said it was not easy to gel with Motwane, “We both come from different schools of cinema. He used to be like ‘get into the character, stay in this, feel the emotion’ and I was like ‘huh? What is he saying!’ We did have friction initially. I asked him one day ‘how can Paakhi be cracking jokes at one moment and then coughing up blood, crying the next? That’s when he realised he should just let me be, and said ‘whatever it is you are doing, is working for me’ That was our moment of reconciliation,” Sinha chukles.
The actor recalls that numerous individuals tried to talk her out of participating in Lootera. “I loved the narration. After that I discussed with some people, and they all said ‘don’t do this film’, and their reasoning was I am too new, and I need to be seen as an ‘actress’, do big films. That was it for me, I said ‘I can do it, and I will show you!’,” she avers.
Sinha offered some fascinating details from the movie’s production, and said: “It was lovely to see Ranveer like that. He gave up coffee in that entire film. He just stayed away and said ‘I don’t need the energy’ I am not as excitable as him, and easier for me to go in and out of character. He is a very hyperactive person. For him to do whatever he did was more of a challenge!”
