Plucking stars for herself

Her first offer to model for an ad may have come when she was in Class 12 but Gayatri Joshi’s parents were not very happy with the idea of letting her model. “I don’t repent it at all. In fact, it turned out to be a great decision taken at that time,” she says.
Her second opportunity arrived when she was in her final year of college. “In Mumbai, a lot of people come around in the campuses searching for new faces. I was registered as well and got an advertisement for Colgate.”
She has received a variety of responses for her performance in Swades but she is far from scared at getting lost in the overpowering presence of Shah Rukh Khan. “I was more excited about the project than nervous. I took it as a great responsibility on me. It was a challenge which I took on.”
Gayatri Joshi was brought up in Mumbai and went to JB Wachha School. “School life was fun, but very normal on the whole. I was very active in my extra-curricular activities and played a lot of table-tennis.
Working with Ashutosh Gowariker and Shah Rukh Khan in her debut will also have its cons. She might not appreciate the offers that come her way, after all films like Lagaan and Swades are not made very often. “I don’t want to be typecast as a simple village girl, please. I would love to play a character from the city, just the way I am. I do not ram around in starched cotton sarees and salwar-kameez all the time.”
Street smart, she maybe willing to be, but there are definitely no plans of shedding clothes as yet. “I don’t think that kind of a look goes with my personality at all. I just don’t have that kind of a face to carry a dare-bare look.”
What if she gets a response similar to Gracy Singh? “I am in no hurry to estabilish myself. I mean, I am not going to starve if I do not do films.”

Published in Hindustan Times Next on January 6, 2005