Priyanka Chopra defends beauty pageants, says Miss World ‘gave me a trampoline to my acting career’

Actor Priyanka Chopra, a former beauty queen, has defending beauty pageants at a time when their relevance is being reconsidered. In an interview to UK’s Tatler magazine, she said appearing in pageants gave her great confidence.

“It’s something that I’m extremely proud of,” said the former Miss World. “It gave me a trampoline to my acting career. It gave me a sense of self, a sense of confidence to be able to stand in front of heads of state, to be able to speak in front of media from around the world, and actually know what I’m talking about.”

Priyanka made her acting debut soon after winning the Miss World crown in 2000, with The Hero: Love Story of a Spy. She has appeared in popular Hindi films such as Krrish and Don (both 2006), Kaminey (2009), 7 Khoon Maaf (2011), Barfi! (2012), Mary Kom (2014), and Bajirao Mastani (2015). She moved to Hollywood and landed a leading role in the spy series Quantico, following which she appeared in a negative role in Baywatch. She has multiple international projects lined up, such as a romantic comedy with Mindy Kaling, Matrix 4, Robert Rodriguez’s Netflix superhero film, Ramin Bahrani’s adaptation of the White Tiger, and a Maa Anand Sheela biopic.

Also read: Priyanka Chopra’s grandmother used to tell her parents, ‘Who’s going to marry her? She can’t cook.’

“When I went to America,” she told Hindustan Times in an interview, “there wasn’t a precedence. I didn’t have a road map to follow because there was no one who had done it before. I had to figure it out, walk into rooms, introduce myself, say ‘I am an Indian actor, my name is Priyanka Chopra, these are the kind of films I want to do’. I demanded playing leading ladies, instead of having parts which were the stereotype of what a Bollywood actor would usually get. Those also came to me, but I was very clear about what I wanted to do.”

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