It’s been years since Ileana D’Cruz has worked down South. And as she comes back to the city where it all started, she gets nostalgic. “I don’t want to leave Hyderabad. Every time I come here, I am flooded with this feeling. I remember all the roads, I know the shortcuts.
I was in fact telling the driver the route I wanted him to take. I know everyone in Hyderabad, and it feels like home,” she says, adding, “I was here last year for Chiranjeevi garu’s birthday.”
‘I want to work in Tollywood’
“I have made a lot of calls but I am leaving tonight because I have a shoot tomorrow so I wouldn’t be able to catch up with my friends. But I want to come back. I am still in touch with Puri (Jagannadh), Rana (Daggubati) and Pragathi among others. We try and catch up as much as possible but I really miss this place. I miss the food even more. The first thing I did when I came here was to order biryani.”
On the career front, Ileana is gearing up for her upcoming movie, Rustom, opposite Akshay Kumar. The actress will be back on the silver screen after one-and-a-half years, but Ileana says that taking a break wasn’t a plan.
“I’ve just finished dubbing for Rustom. It got done too quickly. I think it was a very tricky and challenging role for me. And that’s why I took it up. When you are in the industry for 10 years, you are done playing random roles. You want to do something challenging, which makes you feel good at the end of the day.”
“I didn’t decide to take a break. As clichéd it may sound, jo naseeb mai hai, wahi hota hai. I didn’t plan on starting a career in Bollywood, it just happened. I just went with the flow. When Happy Ending (opposite Saif Ali Khan) was coming up, I thought it would do really well but it didn’t, so I was very disappointed and confused. I wasn’t getting interesting offers. I pretty much kept refusing the films that came my way. The weeks turned into months and months turned into a year-and-a-half. I was waiting for a film that would help me as an actor and project me in a good way on screen.”
Ileana misses Tollywood and says that she would love to be back. She also admits that she never wanted to leave Tollywood, but people misunderstood and stopped offering her roles. “I would love to be back here. It was a lot more fun working in Tollywood. I was doing four films a year... I was constantly working. In Bollywood, it is a much longer process. But I love both industries.
“There was no plan to settle down in Bollywood and not do films in Tollywood. I guess people misunderstood when I did my first Bollywood film (Barfi) and since it was a big success, may be people thought I was not interested in Tollywood anymore. But from my side, there was no plan to stop.
“And I am not a very social person. I don’t have directors’ phone numbers on my phone and I can’t call up people and say ‘hey, offer me a film’. I have people that I am very fond of, Puri and Trivikram for instance, but I don’t feel that it’s my right to call and tell them ‘let me do a film with you’. If they want to cast me, they have the liberty to call me anytime and I would love to do a film here. I believe whatever happens, happens for the best. I took a year and half’s break, but it was fine, I wasn’t regretting not working. I got to spend more time with my family.”
Ileana also adds that there is too much pressure on actresses to look good these days, and that people need to stop being unreasonable.
“People think that they have the authority to tell you how to look. I think you just need to be mentally strong and say ‘no, I like the way I am’. If it’s within the limits I would definitely do it, but if people are being unreasonable, I will tell them to back off.”
