Not Just A Pretty Face

Kriti Sanon is many things at once—friendly, aloof, candid, and careful. Also, don’t mess with her on social media, unless you want to join the list of manies she has already blocked.

- Nandini Bhalla

Kriti Sanon can’t remember the last wild, crazy thing she’s done. “I mean, I’ve played in a snow park as a child, and gotten drunk with friends, but that’s about it.” She scrunches up her face, as if searching for a memory, and then says, “That’s it, to be honest. I always wanted to go scuba diving, though. That should be fun.”

We are a few hours outside of London, at an otherworldly mansion called The Aynhoe Park. The walls are lined with an impressive taxidermy collection, including a polar bear and its friend, the unicorn, sitting atop a piano. Wherever you turn, you meet a sculpture, including towering Greek Gods and imposing Roman pillars. There are dramatic chandeliers, flickering candles, majestic artworks, and an unexpected giraffe dangling from a ceiling in the ballroom.

The effect, unquestionably, is phantasmagorical.

Our venue seems at odds with Kriti’s personality. When we first meet, she replies mostly in polite monosyllables. I tell her she looks even better in person than on screen (she really does, her skin looks airbrushed, the kind you see in advertisements), and she smiles. “I’m a little low on energy,” she says, “and I’d really like to get some food.”

Unfailingly poised, pleasant, but also aloof.

At first.

“I was a shy child,” she confesses later, a bowl of salad in her hand. “And I still take a little time to open up to people. But once I do, I’m there.”

Little Kriti was also a “studious child”, by her own admission. “I used to stay up studying hard, and never took an exam before finishing the entire course. I was never into sports, though— watching or playing.”