As a full-time model, exciting opportunities came my way, and I was lucky to be featured in the Kingfisher Calendar 2014. This helped me get noticed, and I bagged assignments to walk the ramp for well-known Indian designers.
I came to Mumbai in 2000 to do a hotel management course. Following this, I worked as a marketing executive with Hotel Sheraton in Muscat for a year. It was in 2004 that I participated in the Gladrags Mr. India contest and bagged the most popular model award. After that, I did few ramp shows and ads.
Senator Paul Sarbanes really was a big help to me. He was so well known and so well respected, and he said, "Give her a chance here." And he showed me the ways of power and the corridors of power, [as did] Bob Byrd. [They] helped with [my] committee assignments.
When I walk for a designer, I walk the ramp as Vijender Singh, the boxer. I believe that by doing so, boxing will at least, in some way, get promoted in our entertainment industry. Plus, if cricketers can, why can't I?
I happen to be one of those lucky people who says that she's a working actor. And to always be working is very fulfilling and I'm just lucky because the opportunities just came up. And as an Asian American female actor, the opportunities have been furthering, have been widening all across the years. And I can say that there are many young people who see that the opportunities are expanding, as well as you can make it yourself.
I was well aware that I am just a normal girl and it's not like filmmakers are waiting to offer me films. No designers are dying to give their clothes to me. I knew I was making my debut opposite a star kid who was already famous, and it would be difficult for me to get noticed.
The play takes place on a ramp, hanging from a ramp, below a ramp, and to the sides of a ramp.
I did a lot of ramp modelling in South Africa and Hong Kong, when models were free to dance and walk on the ramp.
I didn't have a role model. My role model was Michael Jordan. Bad role model for an Indian dude... I didn't have anyone who looked like me. And by the time I was old enough to have what could have been a role model, they were my peers. Aziz Ansari is my peer. Kal Penn is my peer.
I shot for French and British Vogue. The British Vogue one featured clothes by Chloe and was shot at Highgate and the John Soane Museum. It came out much better in my opinion. I only did one day and was working with my own make-up and hair people and a model who I've known for years.
The commercial success that came with Anjali Menon's 'Bangalore Days' helped me in getting my work noticed.
We are so used to multi-tasking. 2014 was probably the most productive year of my life...But I noticed during the last couple of months when I would get alone with God it was hard to do one thing at a time.
Everyone who achieves success in a great venture, solves each problem as they came to it. They helped themselves. And they were helped through powers known and unknown to them at the time they set out on their voyage. They keep going regardless of the obstacles they met.
I moved to San Francisco to work at Apple's Cupertino office in the summer of 2006, then stayed on remotely in a part-time job back in Austin. It was an internship with iTunes. I helped them launch new features as well as new marketing programs. I also helped program the iTunes Store every week, working on which artists and albums got featured.
The time came where I was able to write an original screenplay [Allied], and it would be read and noticed. I had a meeting with Brad [Pitt], just around the time that he was making World War Z. I basically told him the story and said, "This is what I want to do," and he really responded, so that helped me put the thing together and write it.
I always knew where I was going eventually, so it helped me to stay at home for three years. It helped me to develop my game. But it also helped me off the ice. Life here is way different, and I was able to get older.
Twice is a group with nine members who have all struggled in their own way to get where they are. We know we are so lucky to have the awards we've won, and to be a well-known group.