Actor Freida Pinto said that India has changed in many beautiful ways since she made her debut with Oscar-winning British film Slumdog Millionaire in 2008 and now there is more representation of women who are not “just duty-bound or puritanical”.
Pinto will be next seen in Unaccustomed Earth, an eight-episode series inspired by Jhumpa Lahiri’s 2008 short-story collection. Also starring Siddharth, the series will premiere on Netflix on December 17.
Pinto is one of the nine prominent Indian women who have been featured in the 2027 Pirelli Calendar, along with actor Aditi Rao Hydari, musician Anoushka Shankar, poet Rupi Kaur, model Lakshmi Menon and television host Padma Lakshmi. Pinto, who posed in a dark pink dress under a flower-laden bougainvillea for Sundsbo, said that the representation of women in film and television has changed in the last nearly 20 years. “It has changed in many beautiful ways and there are some changes that are very, very welcome, which is, as far as I’m concerned, is the representation of women in film and television. “Ideas lead to a lot of creativity. And I hope we see a lot more of that. I hope it doesn’t get stunted. I hope it doesn’t get shunned or suppressed. “So, there was no real put-us-in-a-box kind of a situation that ever happened. It was very fluid and flowy and always with conversations like, ‘does this feel good? How does this feel?
Being able to see all kinds, not just the duty-bound or the puritanical women, but also the ones with their complexities and not perfect,” she told PTI at the launch. The actor, also known for starring Hollywood hits such as Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Immortals, and Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, said that she hoped to see “an explosion of creativity” in the country where the youth are “so forthcoming with ideas and the desire for change”. I hope we just see it explode,” she said. So, in that sense, I feel like you’re leaving a mark of yourself in every photograph that has been captured,” the actor said.
