Lolita's journey

Staring out of innumerable film posters, cinema halls and multiplexes for two months now, her kohl-lined eyes have bewitched film-goers in big and small towns alike.

In Amsterdam, where her film Parineeta was premiered as part of the IIFA awards ceremony, celebrities like Karan Johar and Amitabh Bachchan praised her performance.

Meet Vidya Balan, the Lolita in Vidhu Vinod Chopra's take on Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyaya's Parineeta. The gorgeous Tamilian has clearly hit the bull's eye with her debut film.

Balan is not new to the world of showbiz though. Even when she was in school, she was doing the rounds of production houses and advertising agencies.

It was in 1998, however, that she bagged her first commercial for Surf Excel. She hasn't looked back since. Among the nearly 80 TV commercials that Balan has done, the prominent ones are those for Surf, Equal and ICICI.

Recovering from a bout of illness, Vidya Balan is in a reflective mood perpetrated by the heavy rains that caused a deluge in Mumbai. "It's just crazy and I just hope and pray to god that the calamity ends soon," she says, agreeing to the interview reluctantly.

So, is Balan plain lucky to have hit the bull's eye with her very first commercial Hindi film? "If you think having 40 screen tests for nearly six months before getting Vidhu Vinod Chopra to say "yes" is no big deal, then yes, I'm lucky," she remarks.

She says that only the film director Pradeep Sarkar (who has also directed her in many ad films) had faith in her. But convincing Chopra wasn't easy. He wanted a commercially known face and was hoping to sign on Aishwarya Rai. But Sarkar wanted Balan: "There's an old-world charm in her face and her eyes are so expressive," he says.

Balan has had a long, not necessarily arduous, journey to the world of showbiz. "I won't say it's been a struggle because I was actually enjoying everything around me and the gradual progress only made me more and more confident," she adds. Balan forayed into the world of acting right after she completed her schooling at Mumbai's St Antony's.

"My sister made an interesting bio-data for me and we landed at Raman Kumar's studio where nearly 800 entries for a TV serial had been dropped by candidates," she remembers. Though she was selected from among the 150 short-listed candidates, she wasn't lucky. The channel for which the pilot episode was being shot, folded up.

Meanwhile, she joined the Prithvi Theatre workshops and continued to do theatre even as she persevered to get a decent break in television. "I always had faith that somewhere, somehow I'd do well in the industry," she says. Her faith drove her to appear for an audition for a Balaji Telefilms serial where she waited in the line with seasoned actors.

"I'd gone for the audition of a serial called Ithihaas but soon I landed myself a role in the serial Hum Paanch," she says. It was after her first music video with Euphoria, directed by Sarkar, that she was offered Parineeta.

"Pradeep da's idea has taken two-and-a-half years to realise," she says. She continued doing music videos and ads with Sarkar "" including Shubha Mudgal's Kisson Ki Chaadar "" before Parineeta finally happened.

Among other film projects she is working on are Yagna and Munnabhai Meets Mahatma""under the Vidhu Vinod Chopra banner, she confirms. But she is not averse to continue doing commercials.

"If good ads come my way, I'll surely do them. With advertisements you enter a school, an institution where you learn to face the camera, to emote and more importantly excel within 30 seconds," says Balan.

"There's no way I'm going to remain aloof from them for long," she adds. And films? "In films, you need to hold on to one emotion for a longer time." She feels that in commercials, the "brand is king," while in films the storyline is of prime importance.

A big fan of Smita Patil and Amitabh Bachchan ("I used to go mad whenever his songs were played on Chitrahaar on DD"), Balan is now getting used to the hectic star life of attending launch parties and meeting new people everyday. Says she: "It's quite crazy but I'm enjoying it for the time being."

VIDYASPEAK

• Balan is a Tamilian from Kerala
• Graduated in sociology from St Xavier's College, Mumbai
• Was offered a role in a Malayalam film Chakram with actor Mohanlal. The project was shelved mid-way
• Her debut ad film was a Surf Excel commercial in 1998
• Acted in a Bengali movie Bhaalo Theko with actor Joy Sengupta
• She was attending Enrique Iglesias' concert when Chopra called to tell her she'd been selected for a role in Parineeta