For Bollywood fans, 23-year-old Indian supermodel Deepika Padukone came to the silver screen in 2007 with a ready-made tagline: daughter of Indian badminton legend Prakash Padukone.
But her debut in the mega-hit Om Shanti Om quickly established her as a celebrity in her own right. The film aroused curiosity about the newbie who audaciously played her double role with confidence opposite Bollywood's highest-paid star, Shah Rukh Khan.
It is clear, even after a short interview, the junior Padukone is not a brat born to fame. (She was on a whirlwind stop in Toronto on a global promotional tour for her latest film, Chandni Chowk to China, opening Friday at major theatres.)
Not unless a brat is someone who is jet-lagged, cold and hungry but still willing to spend time speaking candidly about her life and beliefs.
Not unless a brat is someone who says of her father, "From him I've learned how to handle success, what being a celebrity is all about and how humble he is."
But she credits her strength to the person behind the scenes who rarely gets talked about: her mother, Ujjala.
She says she always makes a point of talking about her mother in interviews, but it's usually only her father, who achieved tremendous success as a world champ in the '70s and '80s, who is mentioned in the stories that follow.
"(My mother) is the one who actually holds my family together when my dad's travelling in one direction and I'm going in another direction and my sister is doing her own thing.... She's actually really the backbone of our family."
Billed as Bollywood's first kung-fu action comedy, Chandni Chowk to China is so over the top that the male lead, Akshay Kumar, told reporters, "Leave your brains behind" to enjoy the film.
It is about the journey of a small-time cook in New Delhi with big dreams that land him in China – and in trouble. The movie was shot in both India and China and also Thailand, and fuses Indian and Chinese culture with Indo-Chinese musical compositions.
Padukone once again has a double role – it's a fairly common storytelling tool in Bollywood – this time as Sakhi and her twin, Meow Meow.
To prepare for the role of the butt-kicking Meow Meow, she trained rigorously in martial arts for six months, eight hours a day.
It was "extremely painful," she says of filming her role, in which she did her own stunts and was required to hang from cables for many hours a day. Padukone relied on her athleticism – she made it to state-level badminton competitions before deciding to pursue showbiz – to get through it.
"I always had a toned body and the fact that I was an athlete helped. How it helped was because of the kind of sequences I had in the film, I was already prepared for it. Mentally and physically. So when I went on set I didn't waste time practising and rehearsing."
The heavy makeup also proved to be a challenge: two shades darker than her natural colour to play Sakhi, two shades lighter than natural for Meow Meow, and attention to her eyes to make her look Oriental.
"I always wanted to do a film with a retro kind of feel and I got to do that in Om Shanti Om, and I've always wanted to do an action film, which I've managed to do now. So it's great. I think I'm very happy with the kind of films I've started off with."
Chandni Chowk to China is the first Bollywood movie made by Warner Bros. and the second Bollywood film made by a big Hollywood studio. The first, Saawariya, which was made by Columbia Tristar and distributed by Sony in 2007, fizzled at the box office.
Padukone describes herself as shy and reserved but shows flashes of outspokenness when asked about the fact that the highest paid male star gets twice as much as the highest paid female star.
"It's sad, but hopefully if I can change that trend I would like to do that. Because I think at the end of the day, no cinema is made without a woman in it.
"And I think we're as important as the men are, sometimes more important than the men are. And I think we're, if not as hard-working, probably more hard-working than the guys."
Speaking of guys, who are the Hollywood stars she looks up to? After some umming and awwing, she mentions Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and George Clooney, "because of the way they look."
Then she adds, hastily, "I mean, not taking away the fact that they also are brilliant actors. I've not really watched too many English films. I've grown up watching Indian cinema mostly."
Bageshree Paradkar is editor of the Toronto Star's Desi Life magazine, in which Padukone will be profiled Feb. 12.
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