Freida Pinto Has Probably Offended Palestinians, Iranians, Arabs & Indians
Photo: BFA
If Freida Pinto hadn’t become an actress, she would’ve started a business as a wedding planner. But, thankfully, director Danny Boyle discovered the aspiring model for the starring role in Slumdog Millionaire before she became ensconced in the bridal world. Not only is she a talented thespian, but she’s also become a fervent champion for women’s rights that’s truly making noise. “When I finally got that gig that’s when the struggle really started,” the 29-year-old admitted during a SXSW chat hosted by Neiman Marcus. “Because then sustaining the dream of being a global citizen, of being on this global platform, was going to be a lot harder because of the stereotypes I would have to face.”
Pinto has persevered in an industry that is often associated with prejudice. With a dearth of roles for Indian women in Hollywood, she’s played nearly every other ethnicity, not just seeing herself as a middle class woman from Mumbai, India, but also as a representative of diverse and different cultures. “I think I’ve singlehandedly offended Palestinians, Iranians, the Arabs, and probably Indians by playing all their roles,” she said. “As long as I’m not pining to play the Queen of England, which is not my ambition, I think it’s perfectly fine to try and find those very versatile, colorblind roles.” But women’s stories, and not the princess in a glass house kind, are the ones she finds most compelling. “A puritanical woman doesn’t interest me at all. At all. There’s not a single woman that I know that feels they’re so pure, never committed a sin in their life. I do not relate to that. We’re not black and white, we’re gray.”
Jumpstarting her career in the Academy Award-winning film that brought international attention to the poverty that exists in India made Pinto realize that she had a voice and it could be used to do something bigger. Now, in between acting in Woody Allen films and big Hollywood blockbusters, Pinto has also become a powerful crusader in the global effort against gender discrimination and sexual violence against women. “I keep the social responsibility, non-profit angle very, very separate,” she admitted to an intimate room of festival attendees in Austin, Texas. “It sometimes gets very hard to do when you see the news and there is rape, ISIS, sexual trafficking. It’s hard not to get emotionally conflicted between the kinds of films you make and the kind of advocacy work that you do.”
Pinto has found a way to combine her interests by producing documentaries. Most recently, she helped to create India’s Daughter, which is about Jodi Singh, the young woman who was gang raped in 2012 and eventually died as a result of injuries that she sustained. At the time, nationwide protests were started by college students and the movement “spread like wildfire because now everybody was demanding accountability and justice,” she explained. But the movie, which just had its U.S. premiere, is considered controversial and even banned in India. “It has been greatly misunderstood by a lot of people as a 'shame India' documentary and I take this opportunity to make some noise and say that it is not the case. The sole purpose of this documentary is to start a conversation that needs to be started. You can’t tackle a situation like gender violence unless you know what you’re up against. And we do really hope that India’s Daughter can start a global conversation.”
But if the film can’t do that, she’s hoping to inspire others to join her fight (and Emma Watson’s, she gave the #HeforShe spokesperson’s work a shoutout). “The power of one’s own voice should never be underestimated.”
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