The leading female star of Bollywood and a global icon, Priyanka Chopra also had her fair share of bullying and body shaming for her dusky complexion.
The Bollywood diva emerged as a winner of Miss World in 2000 at the age of 18 before making it big in cinema. Started her career in the Tamil movie ‘Thamizan’, the now global icon soon made her way to Bollywood in the following year and continued to rule the industry for two decades.
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In addition to being one of the most acclaimed actors, a successful singer, producer, philanthropist and entrepreneur, Chopra was recently named among the ‘100 most influential women’ for the year by BBC, and speaking to the publication about the same, the actor recalled her dealing with the prevailing colourism in the industry.
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“I was called ‘black cat’, ‘dusky’,” she revealed. “I mean, what does ‘dusky’ even mean in a country where we are literally all brown?”
“I thought I was not pretty enough, I believed that I would have to work a lot harder, even though I thought I was probably a little bit more talented than my fellow actors who were lighter skinned,” Chopra told the interviewer.
“But I thought that was right because it was so normalised.”
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She also blamed the ‘colonial past’ for the mindset and urged the current generation to work towards moving past the belief.
“Of course, that comes from our colonial past, it’s not even been 100 years since we shed the British Raj, so we still hold on to it, I think. But it is up to our generation to be able to cut those ties and change it so that the next generation doesn’t inherit the equity placed on light skin,” the ‘Matrix’ actor concluded.
Meanwhile, on the acting front, Priyanka Chopra has wrapped up the shoot of her upcoming series ‘Citadel’ for streamer ‘Amazon Prime Video’. The Russo Brothers project also features Richard Madden, the Scottish actor known for his performances in ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Eternals’.
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She also has ‘It’s All Coming Back To Me’ and Farhan Akhtar’s girls’ road-trip movie ‘Jee Le Zaraa’ in the pipeline.
