The Diva from Mumbai Favored by Destiny
Slumdog Millionaire and after
In the course of her auditions for Bollywood films, she also auditioned for Slumdog Millionaire and got the part. The film’s success catapulted this dusky beauty to fame and she was part of the cast that won the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture in 2009. She was also nominated for the BAFTA as best actress in a supporting role and, as the film went to win many awards, she came into the limelight. People, Daily Telegraph and Vogue were among the prestigious newspapers/magazines that featured her, Vogue calling her the top ten stylish women in 2009. In 2012 she was in the list of People’s Most Beautiful at Every Age. Recently GQ picked her as the hottest Indian woman of the century. After Slumdog Millionaire finished filming, she studied with acting guru Barry John in Mumbai, to sharpen her acting skills, though she feels that she actually learnt a lot working with Danny Boyle. She has also acted in movies like Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, along with Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Anupam Kher and Naomi Watts, which premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival; in Julian Schnabe’s Miral; in the 2011 science fiction film Rise of the Planet of the Apes, opposite James Franco; in the 2011 fantasy-action-drama film, Immortals; in 2011 in Black Gold; and in Michael Winterbottom’s British drama Trishna in 2011 alongside Riz Ahmed. Currently she is awaiting the release of the highly anticipated Knight of Cups, alongside a host of actors including Christian Bale, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett. She is also working with BAFTA winner, Nick Broomfield in his film, The Catastrophist.
and making the right style statement. Among the stylists who have worked with her are George Kotsiopoulos, one of Hollywood’s top stylists, who styled her for the red carpet at the Academy Awards for Slumdog Millionaire in an electric blue lace Dior dress. ‘Freida has a wonderful sense of personal style and has excellent taste. She is very chic, poised, intelligent and incredibly sweet,’ says George Kotsiopoulos. She along with her stylists, decides on her clothes, hair, makeup and accessories – to get the ‘look’ they want. Freida wore a gown designed by Michael Angel for Cannes 2012 and during the course of the 11 day festival wore outfits designed by Versace, Paco Rabanne and Salvatore Ferragamo among others, invariably making it to various best dressed lists. Her favorite designers are Marchesa, Chanel, Derek Lam, Lacroix Couture, Gaultier Couture, Roland Mouret, all big names in the fashion world. However, it is not that she always wears fancy designer clothes. Her every day clothes owe a lot to her own dress sense and the sense of style she has developed over the years while starting out her modeling career and then acting and later working with stylists. She buys her clothes from shops in London and New York and even occasionally Mumbai, her home-town. After all, she is very busy, attending functions, dinners, film festivals, parties, fashion weeks and more and she has to look good because she is widely photographed.
The Fashion Diva
More than her movies, Frieda Pinto has an impeccable sense of style and possibly the right publicist as she is always in the limelight with her designer clothes. Like other Hollywood professionals and celebrities, she is dressed by professional stylists, who always keep her looking good
Her Love-Life
Before Slumdog happened Freida was actually engaged to her long time boyfriend, Rohan Antao, a marketing executive. They had known each other for
years and had been in a 16 month serious relationship, which was kept under wraps during the shooting of the film. During the course of the filming, Freida got close to her co-star in the movie, Dev Patel, who played the key role of Jamal in the film and is six years her junior.
As Dev and she got closer, she decided to break off her engagement to Rohan, which she did over the phone from Los Angeles. Needless to say, he was devastated. Over the years, from being ‘good friends’ she and Dev are now together and their relationship has already lasted many years. When Dev is in Los Angeles they live in together. When she is in London she lives with his family. Frieda has not been linked to anyone else during the course of her Hollywood journey. As both have separate careers they meet up whenever and wherever they can.
Bollywood in her sights?
Freida has had enough work in Hollywood with international producers to keep her busy with the number of her films released and under production since 2009. However, her first choice was Bollywood when she was struggling to make a name for herself and get a break, going for various auditions at the start of her career. It just so happened that her first film was Slumdog Millionaire, and after that there was no looking back. After Slumdog, she was offered some Hindi films, but was choosy about them and besides, Hollywood beckoned. However, Bollywood has always been at the back of her mind and it seems that she is now ready to sign her first Hindi film, tentatively titled NH10, where she is to play the main protagonist, a detective. She is in talks with Vikramditya Motwane for this film and has approved the script, penned by Navdeep Singh of Manorama Six Feet Under but has yet to sign on the dotted line. While Navdeep was supposed to direct the film, she wants Motwane to do it instead. Earlier, Shoojit Sircar had approached her for Madras Café, the film starring John Abraham, but it did not work out and Nargis Fakhri got the role. July 2014
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