Last Updated: January 02, 2023, 08:02 IST
Manushi Chhillar made her acting debut with Samrat Prithviraj.
Having started her acting career with Akshay Kumar’s Samrat Prithviraj last year, Manushi Chhillar is now awaiting the release of her second project.
Miss World pageant winner and actor Manushi Chhillar has a lot to look forward to in 2023. Having started her acting career with Akshay Kumar’s Samrat Prithviraj last year, she’s now awaiting the release of her second project. Titled Tehran, the film is reportedly a geo-political thriller inspired by true events and will see her in an action-oriented avatar. As she gears up to surprise the audience with her performances in the John Abraham starrer and other forthcoming films, Manushi exclusively reveals to News18 the resolutions that she has taken for this year.
She says, “My professional resolution for 2023 is to make it an even more satisfying year than 2022. I’m being a little ambitious but I keep telling myself that I want to make up for the one-and-a-half years that we spent in the lockdowns. I’m not putting any pressure on myself but I hope I can do that. I want to give my best to my career and grow as an actor. I want to learn more skills. I’m excited about exploring the opportunities that have been given to me.”
On the personal front, she intends on perfecting an old hobby and strike a work-life balance. “I look forward to having a lovely holiday with my family and spend more quality time with them. I had to quit painting when I began studying for my 12th board exams and prepare for a medical entrance. I only started it doing it again one-and-a-half years ago during the lockdown. I want to get better at painting,” she shares, adding, “I’m planning to learn the piano too. I’ve been planning on it since my birthday and it has been seven months and I haven’t started yet. I hope I get the time to do learn it now.”
Looking back at the year gone by, she points out that it has been a rather ‘wonderful’ year as it helped her discover herself in a big way with her first film. “2022 has given me a lot. The biggest highlight is the fact that my debut film released this year. Apart from that, I got to shoot for Tehran, which was a wonderful and very different experience from the other films I shot for. I’ve a lot of gratitude for the year gone by. I was very content with how it was,” she remarks.
The 25-year-old further continues, “It has only made me excited and given me things to look forward to in 2023. 2022 was filled with great work opportunities, a lot of quality time with family, learning and travelling. It was also about personal growth and learning, which made the year even more enjoyable.”
For the unversed, Samrat Prithviraj saw her playing princess Sanyogita, Prithviraj Chauhan’s wife. Though it brought her wide visibility, the film had an underwhelming performance at the box office and opened to mixed reactions. But Manushi shares that it didn’t upset her. “I never expected that I would act and get responses for it – whether good or bad – someday. I did do something that made me fairly popular before I joined films and that was Miss World. It was there that I learnt that there will be people who will like you and there will be those who won’t,” she elaborates.
She goes to point out that that she isn’t the one to be shaken and discouraged by a film’s performance. So, how did she deal with the comments surrounding her debut film? “I haven’t taken them personally because it was work. From what I’ve observed and understood, failure and success is very personal. Luckily, most of the responses I received were good and so, I don’t have anything to complain about. Yes, the film got mixed responses and that’s perfectly fine,” she avers.
An optimist, Manushi chose to focus on the positives. Quiz her about her biggest takeaways from Samrat Prithviraj and she says, “A lot of factors play a role in making the audience like a film – right from the conception of the idea and the scripting to the post-production and the release. Making a film is teamwork. There will be times when the audience will like a film and there will be times when they will reject a film. I don’t think Samrat Prithviraj’s performance created any self-doubt but it did teach me that my job is to give my best.”
