SHE’S 35 and, despite her dimpled cuteness, she’s smart enough to realise that her shelf life in the film industry is limited with much younger stars snapping at her heels.
No wonder Preity Zinta has resorted to reinvention, the mother of necessity in showbusiness. She has used her celebrity status to construct a new image as a businesswoman, humanitarian and a minor sports mogul.
Experts in the sports field recently reported that Preity’s stake in the Kings XI Punjab team, which she bought in 2008, is valued around Rs350 to Rs400 crores... despite its poor run at the Indian Premier League (IPL) this year. That makes her one of the wealthiest women in Bollywood.
She shares the ownership as part of the KPH Dreams Cricket consortium with former beau Ness Wadia, paying Rs342 crores over 10 years for the Mohali franchise, and is considered the IPL’s youngest owner.
She is also likely to inherit Kamlistan Studios, estimated to be worth about Rs600 crores, from its co-owner Shandar Amrohi, who “adopted” her as his legal heir. The studio belonged to Kamal Amrohi, who is Shandar’s father, and is considered prime property.
Last December Preity, who has a master’s degree in criminal psychology, took up a series of short business courses at the Harvard Business School for three weeks. It was to sharpen her business acumen, she said.
She told website OneIndia: “When I joined films I never went to an acting school. Then last year, I did a two-day workshop with Anupam Kher. It enriched me so much. I wondered why I never went to acting school. Now that I’m an entrepreneur, I didn’t want to look back and ask the same question one day.”
Another aspect of her redefined avatar is her humanitarian work, supporting causes for women and children as well as campaigning against human trafficking in India.
Preity shot to fame as a soap model where her dimples scored big with director Shekhar Kapur who recommended her to Mani Ratnam who cast her in his 1998 film Dil Se.
Her other hits include Kal Ho Naa Ho in 2003 for which she was named best actress at the Filmfare Awards, Koi Mil Gaya in the same year with Hrithik Roshan, Salaam Namaste in 2005 with Saif Ali Khan and the 2006 Karan Johar film Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. In 2007 she appeared in art house film The Last Lear with Amitabh Bachchan, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The following year she won the best actress award at the Chicago International
Film Festival for her role as a battered wife in Deepa Mehta’s film Heaven On Earth.
Preity also made a cameo appearance in last year’s Salman Khan-Kareena Kapoor flop Main Aurr Mrs Khanna. Her next film, Har Pal, is on hold as her co-star Shiney
Ahuja has been jailed on rape charges. She admitted that 2009 was not the “most happening year” for her.
“I had got involved with IPL and it was a very big investment for me. I was building a huge property for myself. But I miscalculated. I thought I could understand the
business in six months.
But that was not the case and six months became 18 months,” said the actress in an interview with The Times Of India.
But could she have chewed off more of the IPL pie than she could swallow?
Last month the Indian government launched an investigation into the financial dealings of the various IPL stakeholders with allegations of proxy owners and illegal funding sources. Preity’s consortium submitted financial statements
reporting a Rs25-crore loss in the very first year of its formation.
In an interview with NDTV, Preity said: “I’m fed up of telling people that I’ve invested my own money because somebody thinks that somebody bought it for me and now that somebody’s fronting it for me. I’ve spent two years of my life staying away from films and trying to make something out of it and working hard on it. It’s really ridiculous.”
Singaporean film distributor Arun Pala told tabla! that despite her problems with
the IPL, Preity made the right move to recreate her image: “To me, she is the Sandra Bullock of Bollywood. I think it is very smart of her to reinvent herself as
her time, at least where mainstream masala films are concerned, is up.”
Added Mumbai-based author and movie critic Anupama Chopra: “The great screenwriter William Goldman had said this about showbiz: ‘Nobody knows anything’.
So nobody knows why Preity Zinta’s career went cold so quickly. I think it’s wonderful that she has diversified into cricket and business. All heroines should take a cue because shelf life for actresses just seems to be getting shorter and shorter.”
But Preity isn’t ready to be written off just yet: “I have been here for 10 years and there have been three times in my career that I have been written off and it is just not me. It has happened with Mr Bachchan. They wrote off Shah Rukh. They wrote off Aishwarya.
“I think only when you are a big star do they write you off. I am ready to work again with full commitment. In 2010, I’ll be working back to back on a couple of projects. You’re going to see a lot of me now.”
