High on work

The beautiful Charmme is in an unusually upbeat mood and is reeling out dialogues in Malayalam rolling all the ‘Ls' perfectly. She looks amused, excited like a school girl about the happenings in Kerala where she is shooting for debut film Tappana with superstar Mammootty.

She says, “They told me to make an ‘endry' and it took me a while to understand it was ‘entry'. I asked them what my name in the film was and they said Malliga, it is actually Mallika. The director says I have a very expressive face but I should use it less and be a lot more subtle. In the North things are different, for Zilla Ghaziabad, the dances are modern, here our steps are more tuned for the mass. Pony Prakash Raj, the choreographer would keep saying, ‘Baby, don't use the hips so much.' You know I'm loud and use a lot of expressions. My lingo had proper Ghaziabadi accent.”

The actor is proud to have 65 films in her kitty that she had acquired over eleven years. This year she has four releases and is in the process of signing more. “We are actors and we need to have more exposure. I delayed my debut in Malayalam films as I wanted to do something that I had never done before and wanted people to be surprised at my body of work. My entry in Kannada and Malayalam films is all about getting better and better as an artiste by each passing day. In Tappana, I'm a lower caste innocent girl, who is married and is jailed for five years. The film starts from that point when she is coming out of jail after five years and the journey is shown to us through a flashback.”

Charmme has a knack of picking up languages swiftly and proficiently. She says that she owes it to God's blessings and her DNA. “My dad has an ease with all languages, when he was in Mumbai he would converse in Gujarati, Bengali and Marathi with his clients. Even after 11 years in the industry, I still love my job as much as I did when I first entered it.

She adds, “I'm working with Sanjay Dutt, Vivek Oberoi, Arshad Warsi in Zilla Ghaziabad and as a film choreographer in a Kannada film and a high class call girl in a Telugu film to be directed by Chandu. My Malayalam film releases this year. It's only May now and I have four releases ready. My work gives me a high.”

Does she have any regrets on the debacle of Buddah Hoga Tera Baap? Not really, she never expected she would do an Amitabh Bacchan's film. “Never in the wildest of dreams did I think I would meet him, forget about acting with him. I played one of the main characters in that film. Also I maintained a low profile during the release and didn't hype it. Once a film releases, I just leave it and I don't ponder over it. Whatever be the result I accept it in all humility. I was offered many Hindi films after Buddah..but all the plots were more or less identical, and I was keen on variety. I never ever felt like a newcomer when I was doing my first Hindi film my experience and confidence helped me; my first shot was a lengthy dialogue. All this comes only with experience; had Buddah been my first film, I would have run away.”