Anushka Sharma On How To Succeed On Your Own Terms

- Cheryl Ann Couto

Growing up is delicate business and when you have to do it in the headlines, you’d best have on good quality shin guards. Anushka Sharma is a woman now. The girl I met five years ago, chattering at top speeds, mouthy and indignant, frenetic with ambition, is gone. In her place is a serious, measured woman, consumed by her work and passionately building a dream. Where did the road diverge?

“I used to be very anxious,” Sharma says. She’s over the phone with me from Amsterdam, where she’s shooting for Imtiaz Ali’s new film (tentatively titled The Ring) with Shah Rukh Khan. “I started modelling when I was 15, and I was acting by 19. It’s a very raw time to be subjected to rejection and people’s opinions about everything you do. This, while you’re trying to wrap your mind around this new work, this new world that you know nothing about. Once I began to understand what was making me anxious, I wasn’t anxious anymore.”