Check out my muscles!” says Shilpa Shetty, as she wraps up a hot, hot photoshoot and settles down for a chat.Looking svelte and ultra-glam in red, muscles are the last thing you’d expect this lady to flaunt. But in a happy, chirpy mood, Shilpa prattles on about the little things in life. She explains that she’s been doing weight training for a movie where she has to kick ass, “and so these muscles!” she giggles.
And when she’s tired of all that weight raining, she sleeps. Actually, she says she always sleeps a lot. “I sleep a lot because I love it. I watch a lot of TV – I’m addicted to it. I enjoy being in a dark room. Maybe that’s because I’m tired of being in so much light. Watching TV in a dark room feels as if I’m watching it in a theatre,” she says.
But Shilpa doesn’t normally get to do all that. She’s a busy girl, what with shooting for Sunny Deol’s The Man, The Unforgettable Tour, an international project and her home production. As far as her production goes, Shilpa rubbishes rumours that she’s signed on Bipasha Basu for the movie. “I haven’t finalised Bipasha for my movie. Why are people so intrigued about everything? This sometimes works against the film. I don’t want these things to come out too early.”
With all that happening, though, she says she doesn’t understand people who say that she doesn’t contribute to the Indian film industry. “To unnecessarily put me down, to say things like, ‘Oh, what has she done in India?’ is very demeaning. Sometimes, people make me feel like I haven’t achieved anything. Someone on TV once said that I started my own production and came out with the yoga DVD because I wasn’t getting any work. I’d like to ask them, what do you know? I have sold a product of India abroad – they will not talk about that. That a girl from India has made it big abroad, uska koi kuch nahi bolega! I can also just take so much. I want to tell people now that I am not here to take this s**t. They constantly make me feel like an outsider in my own country. It is so weird!” she exclaims.
However, she says she’s no stranger to low phases. “I was written off as an item girl. I don’t know where they got that term from. I think I’ve done fewer item numbers than Aishwarya Bachchan. She’s done Ishq Kameena, Kajra Re... On the other hand, I have done only one, in Shool. The other songs became famous only because I was the heroine in those movies,” she says, adding, “But those phases made me work on myself. They talked about my make-up, I improved it; talked about my dress sense, I changed that. I come from a non-filmy background, so I had to learn everything on my own.”
But she’s happy now, in love, and doesn’t like talking about it much. Why? “I don’t like people jumping to conclusions and I guess that’s why many actors guard their personal lives. I am a little superstitious, more than insecure. I believe in this nazar thing and all. So I believe that if something has to happen, then let it happen at the right time,” she says.
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