While I am fluent in Hindi, I was a little worried about my accent. So when I was approached for 'Karwaan,' I told them they need to first listen to me speak in Hindi, in case it sounds off.
Once, a man at the customs duty check at the Delhi Airport asked me a question in Hindi, and I told him that I didn't speak the language. He got angry and said, 'How could you not speak in Hindi? Hindi is our mother tongue.' I told him that it wasn't my mother tongue. He got furious, and made me wait for over 45 minutes.
While I was doing Hindi, people there laughed at me because I couldn't speak Hindi and English properly.
Until we got married, Radha didn't utter a word of English and now she won't speak Hindi. Her Hindi's pretty good actually - she learnt it while watching Hindi movies.
Now I know Hindi, and I can read and write Hindi, but the problem is that I can't improvise when I am acting because I think in English, so I have to translate my thinking from English to Hindi, and therefore, I speak slowly.
Dubbing for myself in Hindi is a big task. I know Hindi. I can read and write Hindi, but I dont normally speak the language, and that is very important.
I'm not a television anchor for a Hindi channel or a radio jockey. So I may not be able to have a spontaneous conversation in Hindi. I'm a Bollywood actress, and I can certainly speak my dialogue in Hindi.
My Hindi was not very good, but I guess people liked my accent and gave me Hindi roles.
Of course you cannot compare my Hindi with a Hindi-speaking person, but I am confident enough to hold a conversation in mixed Hindi-English.
I haven't even grown up on Hindi films because my Hindi is bad; I am a Parsi and we speak English or Gujarati at home.
When I decided to start a career in the Hindi entertainment industry, I knew I had to put in efforts as I'm not very fluent with the language of Hindi, as I pronounce certain words differently.
I was born and brought up in London, so I couldn't speak Hindi properly. But as I am socialising more with my Hindi speaking friends, I'm getting better at the language.
One day Mani Sir called me to his office and narrated the script of 'Raavan.' He then asked me how good my Hindi is. When I told him that it's quite good, he asked one of his assistant directors to talk to me in Hindi and I was asked only to reply in Hindi.
I speak Hindi with a Punjabi accent, not a Haryanvi accent.
When I did my first Hindi film, 'Sargam,' I had to play a dumb girl. Critics went to town saying that since I was a south Indian and didn't know how to speak Hindi, producers of the movie decided to make me play dumb.
I speak Hindi fluently because my mother speaks only in Hindi and Urdu.
I watch a lot of Hindi films. I live in Hyderabad, where 60 per cent of the people speak Hindi.