*Preity was Natural, Vulnerable

'And Preity would say, 'Feeling... feeling'.'

- 

She's pretty, she's chatty and she always manages to coax a smile out of you with her flashing dimples and her Insta 'ting'.

Give her a Dil Se.. or a Dil Chahta Hai and she will sashay through these films with effortless ease. But what makes Preity Zinta stand out in a crowd is a certain chutzpah that made her go beyond the conventional Bollywood heroine.

She fearlessly pushed the envelope, playing a teenage single mother in Kya Kehna, a streetwalker turned surrogate in Chori Chori Chupke Chupke, a schizophrenic shrew in Armaan and a journalist covering the war in Lakshya.

In fact, just two years into the business, she played a rookie CBI officer who joins hands with an embittered, incarcerated criminal to stop a serial killer who is sacrificing young children in his quest for immortality in Tanuja Chandra's 1999 psychological horror thriller Sangharsh.

When the director learnt that Preity would be bringing on her 50h birthday on January 31, her instant reaction was, "Wow, would you believe that! Been so long since Sangharsh."

Tanuja shares some memories with Rediff.com Senior Contributor Roshmila Bhattacharya from their journey together: "Ashutosh Rana's cry was one of the most memorable as well as scariest parts of the film and Preity's reaction to it was real. She let him shake her nerves completely, and that's what I was looking for."

What would you like to tell Preity on her 50th birthday?