It's been a very hectic month for Jacqueline Fernandez. Right after finishing her schedule for David Dhawan’s Judwaa 2, she got onto the promotions of her next, A Gentleman (releasing Sept 25). In between the packed schedule, she celebrated her birthday, too. The buzz has been really exciting for the actor, who confesses to us to have been a confused, under-confident girl when, impressed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas, she first came to Mumbai to live her Bollywood dream.
Recalling the days after her debut film, Aladin, she says, “It was such a crazy time. It was a new country. I was away from home, my family and just about everyone else. I had just entered this big world of Bollywood and was so unsure. I was scared and insecure. Looking back, I feel I have learnt so much. A lot of self-discovery has happened. I'm truly grateful to the industry for making me the person that I always wanted to become.”
The journey, in the Hindi film industry, she says has taught her to be strong and perseverant. She believes it’s always in the hands of an individual to make the journey they want it to become. “I wanted it to be beautiful. I surrounded myself with amazing people.” All sorts of rumours surrounding the people in the industry, any conjecture, she says are again in the hands of one.
“You have to be able to not let these things get to you. You have to look at the positives. If these things don’t happen, your journey won’t be fun. Not that I am asking for them, but everything makes you stronger,” she says.
Her pole dance number Chandralekha in the film A Gentleman was an interesting experience, she says. Roksolano Chubenko, the trainer, worked really hard. “We had no time to train for the song. And the amount of time in which she has been able to teach me was truly commendable. I mastered as much as I could in just two months. That kind of work would have taken at least a year in a normal scenario. But we pushed ourselves really hard.
The first month was really tough, she says. She couldn't even climb. It was in the second month that she feels she really picked up, though after getting hurt and bruised a lot.
While she is trying to better her craft in every way possible, language has been a big issue, not just for her but for any actor from another country, in her case Sri Lanka, trying to make a foothold here. She has been at it though, bettering her Hindi since the time she made up her mind that she has to be around. But she confesses, “It is still a work in progress. But the progress has been one that I am very proud of. I have been able to gain much more confidence in speaking. There was a time when I was lacking confidence and used to think what people would say if I speak, that they would judge me and laugh at me. Now I don’t care about those stuff. I am able to speak and if I make mistakes, it’s not my shame but of the person who is laughing.”
The actor has often been typecast into arm candy characters, like many other female actors. The good part is that she isn’t apprehensive of accepting it.
But she feels it’s been changing and better roles are coming her way. “Initially, I was cast in smaller roles because I came as a complete outsider, didn’t know the language and had no acting background. I was never professionally trained and so the roles could not be as demanding. But now, they have grown, bit by bit, and I can only hope that they grow more. I feel that there’s a lot more I can give and I am just waiting for a script and a role and a director to come along [to prove my capabilities]. And there’s a lot more that can be done,” she says with a hope that she works with Bhansali one day.
