January 14th, 2009
She’s currently shooting for Mani Ratnam’s bilingual film Ravan/Ashokavanam, but it’s her appearance in an item number in Nagarjuna’s King that has Priya Mani got people talking about Priya Mani’s hot looks.After all, she’s who audiences found most interesting in the song sequence that featured seven other beauties, including Trisha, Anushka, Genelia, Mamtha Mohandas, Charmee and Sneha Ullal.Tell her that and she sounds surprised, “Is it? I didn’t know I was sexy. I do put in a lot of effort to look good on screen. But yes, that statement has made my day.”And if taking the glam route for a song wasn’t enough, Priya Mani has taken the quotient a step further by wearing a swimsuit in her next film, Drona. The film sees the National Award -winning actress pairing up with Nitin, who has had a spate of flops recently. Is the swimsuit a part of trying to give Nitin’s career a much-needed boost? “One swimsuit sequence cannot ensure a hit. The scene is in a dream song and I had to jump into a pool. Obviously, I can’t jump into water wearing a saree,” she says.
Ask her about working with Mani Ratnam and she’s all excited. “It’s been great. I just started shooting two days ago in Orchha, Madhya Pradesh, in misty weather. I’m lucky to work with Mani sir at an early stage in my career. It’s every actor’s dream and I am living it,” she says.
And though she hasn’t met Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, she’s happy to have met Abhishek Bachchan and Vikram. “I’m sharing screen space with established actors and consider that a big achievement,” she says. In Ashokavanam, she also co-stars with Prithviraj. The duo has already worked together in several movies and rumour mills have been on overdrive about the two being more than just co-stars. “There’s nothing brewing between us. He was my first Malayalam co-star. Our association dates back to well over 5-6 years. And my mother and his mother are batchmates,” Priya clarifies.
And given her busy schedule, it seems unlikely that she has time for romance. Her call sheets are so packed that Priya doesn’t even have time to do a Kannada movie, she asserts. “I have a couple of Tamil films and Telugu films slated for release in the coming months and was shooting for them. And I hope that 2009 will be as good for me as 2008 was. I may even do a Kannada movie. But not now; I just don’t have the time,” she signs off.
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