Bollywood actress Sunny Leone has long faced the wrath of India’s social conservatives for her porn-star past, but she remains determined to carve a career in Hindi movies even as fresh controversy erupted this week.
Canadian-born Leone said making the transition to Indian cinema had been difficult, but she now felt at home in Bollywood.
“When I first got into the industry, it was definitely not a good feeling when people are not so happy about your choices in life,” Leone said during an interview in Mumbai.
Photo: AFP
“But as time has gone by, especially over the last six months, I’ve gotten to know and I’ve gotten to meet some amazing celebrities and it’s a journey,” she said.
The 34-year-old, the most searched celebrity on Google in the country for the past three years, has often drawn controversy in deeply conservative and religious India.
This week, social media erupted in sympathy for Leone after she calmly faced down what many felt was a misogynistic grilling about her past by Bhupendra Chaubey on his top-rating TV show, during which he even suggested she was linked to the increase in India’s pornography viewing.
However, in a testament to the increasing acceptance of her by the Bollywood establishment, big name stars, such as Aamir Khan, Rishi Kapoor and Anushka Sharma, took to Twitter to voice support for Leone.
A subsequent video on Facebook of Leone expressing her gratitude for the support has been viewed more than 1 million times.
The actress, whose real name is Karenjit Kaur Vohra, was born in the Canadian province of Ontario to Indian Sikh immigrants in 1981.
She moved to India five years ago after a successful career as a porn actress, which included being named “Penthouse Pet of the Year” in 2003.
She got her first break in India in 2011 when she appeared on Celebrity Big Brother-inspired local reality TV show Bigg Boss before making her Bollywood debut the following year.
Leone has now appeared in more than eight Indian movies and is set to star in a risque new comedy called Mastizaade (meaning “born out of mischief” in Hindi) which will hit screens on Friday next week.
At a film studio in the north of Mumbai, home to Bollywood, Leone is clearly proud of the progress her career is making.
“When I came here there were a lot of people who didn’t want me here and there were a lot of people who had lots of crazy things to say about me,” she said. “But I have so many more fans who care about me, that like me, that like the movies that I’ve put out, or songs or photo shoots. I’ve had more supporters than I’ve had haters.”
Leone said one of her toughest moments was when a woman filed a police complaint against her in Mumbai last year for “promoting obscenity and destroying Indian culture and society.”
“It’s definitely something that did affect me. It was not fun at all,” Leone said of the complaint. “Hopefully situations like that don’t come up again because I’m not a part of that world anymore and I don’t think it’s fair to bring up things that have no merit at this point in time in my life.”
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
In front of a secluded temple in southwestern China, Duan Ruru skillfully executes a series of chops and strikes, practicing kung fu techniques she has spent a decade mastering. Chinese martial arts have long been considered a male-dominated sphere, but a cohort of Generation Z women like Duan is challenging that assumption and generating publicity for their particular school of kung fu. “Since I was little, I’ve had a love for martial arts... I thought that girls learning martial arts was super swaggy,” Duan, 23, said. The ancient Emei school where she trains in the mountains of China’s Sichuan Province
RSS