Nymphaea
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The Edit by Net-A-Porter
April 16, 2015
A Woman Of Now
Model Freida Pinto
Photographer Chad Pitman
Styling Tracy Taylor
April 16, 2015
A Woman Of Now
Model Freida Pinto
Photographer Chad Pitman
Styling Tracy Taylor
net-a-porterFrom challenging Hollywood’s notions of beauty to championing women’s rights around the world, actress FREIDA PINTO’s strength knows no bounds. CELIA WALDEN meets one committed A-lister.
When Freida Pinto stepped off stage early last month, after having given a rousing speech at the star-studded US premiere of the documentary India’s Daughter in New York, she was anxious to know one thing. “I went over to my friends and asked: ‘Did I get the ‘you go, girl!’ finger from Meryl?’ Because after that moment [following Patricia Arquette’s acceptance speech] at the Oscars, that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Pinto needn’t have worried. Meryl Streep – who also spoke at the screening – was “totally into it”. More importantly, Leslee Udwin’s film, which had been banned in India – it investigates the 2012 gang-r*pe and murder of student Jyoti Singh in Delhi – received the airing and support it so desperately needed.
A lot has changed in the life of Mumbai-born Pinto in the six years since she first met Streep, her long-time idol. Back at the 2009 BAFTAs in London – when Pinto was nominated as Best Supporting Actress for her breakthrough performance in British director Danny Boyle’s 2008 sleeper hit, Slumdog Millionaire – she remembers introducing herself to Streep in a fit of pluck.
“I wanted to tell Meryl how inspired I was by her, but the words weren’t coming out properly,” recalls Pinto, 30. “Then she turned and said, ‘Oh, Freida!’ I couldn’t believe she knew who I was. She has this larger-than-life persona, but when you’re talking to her, it’s woman to woman. She’s a grand actress and a grand human being, but in every other sense she’s not grand at all.”
You can tell a lot about a person – their underlying motivations and aspirations – from whom they pick as mentors (Pinto also admires humanitarians and activists Angelina Jolie and Emma Watson). It is immediately clear that the luminous beauty, tucking into an improbably large plate of scrambled eggs at the Hollywood brasserie in which we meet, has a similar grit and sense of purpose to those she admires, belied by her guileless gaze and fragile frame.
Not that the one-time model daughter of a teacher and a bank manager was always as serene as she is now. With her pre-Slumdog screen experience limited to presenting an English-language travel show on Indian TV, winning the part of Latika was highly unexpected and the ensuing media furore even more so. Her life, she admits, changed overnight.
“It was also partly due to the fact that Dev [Patel, her Slumdog co-star] and I were dating, so suddenly there we were being chased down London’s Regent Street by the paparazzi. People were being knocked down in front of cars and it was really messy,” says Pinto. “For a long time I felt that I couldn’t be myself. I pushed a lot of friends away from me at that time and it took me about two years to understand it all. Now that I do, I feel like there’s a method to this madness.”
Initially, Pinto’s “method” was to throw herself into her work: within two years, she had made seven films back to back. She was Josh Brolin’s mysterious muse in Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger; an orphaned Palestinian girl in Julian Schnabel’s Miral; a supportive girlfriend in Rise of the Planet of the Apes; an Indian Tess of the d’Urbervilles in Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna; and the Greek priestess, Phaedra, in Immortals.
“But even though I was happy that the projects kept coming and getting better,” the actress frowns, “there was a part of me that was not feeling fulfilled.”
It was her mother who reminded Pinto of something she had said when she first started modeling at 19: “If it gives me a bigger ticket and I can use whatever fame I get to help women and girls who have been sexually abused, then it’s worth it.” So in July 2012, Pinto met with global children’s charity Plan International and became an ambassador for its Because I am a Girl campaign, which aims to protect girls and women from violence and sex trafficking.
“You hear that phrase so much,” laments Pinto. “‘I got raped… because I’m a girl’, ‘I can’t go out at night…because I’m a girl’, when really it should be, ‘Because I’m a girl, I can give birth to the next generation of enlightened males.’”
A trip to Sierra Leone, where teenage pregnancy and female genital mutilation are rife, didn’t fill Pinto with despair, as she feared it might. “Actually, I came back so inspired,” she says. “I learned that having preconceived notions and stereotypes is pointless. And I should’ve known that – I’m faced with stereotypes all the time.”
Every beautiful young actress is. But Pinto – whose agent likes to joke about “all the ‘white girl’ roles” she chases – has to contend with perceptions about both her ethnicity and her looks. “It’s hard because the first thing people see when I go into an audition is that I am 100% Indian,” smiles Pinto, “but I don’t remember a time in my life when I did not see myself as a world citizen. When I watch films, I can always imagine myself as the female lead – even if it’s Minnie Mouse,” she laughs.
The issue of her beauty – not always the boon one might imagine where meatier female roles are concerned – is discomfiting enough to make Pinto shift in her seat. “It’s not necessarily the way I see myself. In fact, I don’t even like to look at myself in the mirror,” she says. “But I’m aware of the perception and I always say that if it’s because of that one line in Slumdog where Latika is described as “the most beautiful girl in the world”, then I have to do everything that I can to change that perception.”
Pinto’s earnestness is touching, but she is not immune to female frivolities. For the girl who used to scour Bombay for beautiful fabrics and take them to her “secret tailor” so he could create “something wonderful for me to wear for Christmas or a wedding”, being invited to sit in the front row at Paris or New York Fashion Week never loses its thrill. “I’m very lucky in that I’m given gifts all the time, but when you are given a dress to wear that’s fresh off the runway, you do feel very special,” she says. Favorite designers include Prabal Gurung and Jason Wu, and she loves “everything the Ferragamo family does. I’m a self-proclaimed honorary Ferragamo family member.”
Fashion weeks aside, Pinto is set to be busy this year, with two new films in the offing: Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups – which she “knows nothing about, because although I’ve filmed all my scenes, that’s the way he works” – and Richard Raymond’s indie film, Desert Dancer, in which a group of friends in a volatile 2009 Iran risk their lives to form an underground dance company. “I had to train [to dance] for six months,” she explains, “because although I grew up in India, which is very musical because of Bollywood, this was very different. I had a lot of inhibitions binding me down; surrendering yourself, getting in touch with the child inside you, is very hard.”
Unusually for an actress, Pinto is embracing the passage of time. “I’m excited about the kind of roles I might get in my thirties; I’m hoping they’re going to be very different,” she says. “I’m lucky that I haven’t been overexposed. There were a lot of films I said no to, because I wanted to concentrate on longevity.”
This from the girl who was going to “give it all up”, at 25, to become a wedding planner? Pinto shrugs. “I just love the idea of love, although I know that sounds very utopian. And I always think it’s good to have a B and C plan,” she adds gravely. Something tells me she’ll never have to resort to either.
Knight of Cups is out Dec 11 (US)
