Alia Bhatt: I Wouldn't Call Myself A Feminist

The sharp-as-a-tack youngling talks shop, sl*tshaming and superiority complexes. Don’t be fooled by that tenderfooted aura—her big girl boots are on and she’s arched to kick *ss..

- Saumyaa Vohra

We can’t help but get the feeling every time Alia clears her throat and settles into ‘interview mode’ that the girl has the poise and grace of someone well beyond her years. She tells us, at a later stage in the interview that, au contraire, she’s always felt poise isn’t her métier. “I feel like I’m clumsier than I ought to be, that I lack a certain composure,” she confesses. But whether it’s her effervescent stride in the photographs, or the clarity with which she strings together her stray thoughts, ‘graceless’ is not the descriptor that jumps to mind. She’s come a long way from her infantine character in Student Of The Year, and a potent mix of character choices in the recent past— from Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921) to Udta Punjab—has put her several notches higher on the cinema stalwart list. “I think one of the most interesting flashbacks to my journey as an actor was a 50-page scrapbook a fan sent me that stood out amongst the flowers and the fan mail,” she smiles. “It had pictures that documented each of my films, and the headway I’d made in my career. It was also a strange feeling to realise my whole life as an actor could fit into 50 pages!” she laughs. In that graph, she throws the dart at Udta Punjab for being her biggest challenge to date. “It was so far from who I am in real life that those 21 days of shoot were complete torture!” she says, letting out a little whoosh of breath. “Good torture, though”, she hastily amends, adding that she’d happily go through it again if she had the chance to play a truly cruel, negative character, “much like Shah Rukh Khan’s role in Baazigar,” says she, her eyes gleaming with possibility.