Genelia D’Souza’s career in Bollywood is expected to take off this year with four A-list movies on the cards – It’s My Life with Harman Baweja, Hook Ya Crook with John Abraham, Life Partner with Govinda, Akshaye Khanna and Prachi Desai and Yahoo with Shahid Kapur. However, she hasn’t forgotten her origins in south cinema and is proud of her work there. “I owe a lot to Southern cinema and today I’m on the verge of creating history as I will be the first actress to do the same role in three different languages,” she says, “I played Hasini in Bommarillu (Telugu) and Santosh Subramaniam (Tamil) and now I’m playing Pooja Saxena in the Hindi remake, It’s My Life with Harman Baweja in the lead.”
She also believes that South cinema offers her the opportunity to experiment with different types of roles and recently completed the Tollywood movie Sasirekha Parinayam which challenges the dowry system. In the movie, Genelia has a decidedly de-glam look. “To a certain extent Aditi of JTYJN and Hasini are similar in nature as they have freshness, youth and energy and the characters are just like me in real life,” she explains, “But now, I want to do roles that I have not done before, something more challenging.” She will be doing a second Telegu movie, Katha, later in the year.
Genelia, who is the brand ambassador for Fanta, recently met up with the winners of their Bunking with Genelia competition in Chennai. Contestants had to send an SMS to their local radio station giving their most imaginative reason for bunking with Genelia – hanging out and talking.
