The fashion designer set a Guinness World Record in 2012 for the highest number — 13,262 — of pearls on a wedding dress
Now, that's quintessential Preity for you, the girl from Shimla, who was discovered by Shekhar Kapur at a talent hunt contest. A graduate in criminal psychology, here was an unusually qualified candidate for the movies.
The Preity Zinta I've known over the years can be as warm and endearing as she can be argumentative and impetuous. Perhaps it's the tough filmmaking system which has made not only her, but a majority of heroines that way. It's no secret that leading ladies just don't command the same status and pay packet as their male counterparts do. Also, a woman is more vulnerable to criticism and disparagement.
Mercifully, Preity has managed to speak out loud and clear, be it in the course of legal cases involving the underworld, or on being subjected to questionable behaviour by a former boyfriend at Mumbai's Wankhede cricket stadium. That controversy fizzled out gradually. Clearly, the actress has demonstrated that she wasn't the sort to be subjugated.
Yet, I can't help feeling that the needless obstacles that she has had to clear in her private life did hinder her professionally. She could have evolved into a versatile artiste. Given her self-confidence and camera-friendly looks (highlighted by deep dimples), she could have effortlessly been the No 1 heroine. Without a doubt, she was among the A-listers during the late 1990s and through most of the first decade of the new millennium.
Unfortunately, a stasis set in next. The feisty actress appeared to have lost the vital killer instinct, explained to an extent by her diversion into the field of sport entrepreneurship and into the peril-fraught area of film production. The Paris-located romcom Ishq Forever - dignified with the presence of the legendary French actress Isabelle Adjani - was an unmitigated disaster, rejected by the masses as well as the mandarins.
Alas, Preity was no longer happening. If news surfaced about her, it wasn't exactly complimentary - till she announced her marriage in February to Gene Goodenough, vice-president of a renewal energy company in Los Angeles. Alluding to his surname, she tweeted that now puns would pour in on his surname. Let them roll, the more the merrier.
Is Preity back in the fray then? Right now, she has only one long-delayed project titled Bhaiyyaji Superhitt, toplining Sunny Deol, in the pipeline.
Something tells me that that there's an incalculable number of Zinta fans all over the world, who'd celebrate her return to the movies. Sooner the better.
The fashion designer set a Guinness World Record in 2012 for the highest number — 13,262 — of pearls on a wedding dress
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