It was a phone call that changed 17-year-old Amy Jackson’s life.
She remembers it like it happened yesterday. “It was a Friday morning and the telephone rang,” she recalls. She heard her father talking animatedly for a few minutes with the caller.
“There is a director in India who wants to meet you about a film,” he told her. Then a Liverpool girl interested in English literature, philosophy and horse-riding, she didn’t think too much about it.
After a few discussions in London and a look-test a week before Christmas that year, she was on board the project. She came to Chennai a month later, for the first time, and shot “amid all the hustle and bustle”. The film was Vijay’s Madraspattinam and Amy caught the eye of audiences as the young “foreign girl”.
Today, she’s no longer foreign. She’s just bought a house in Bandra, Mumbai, and visits Chennai often, for she’s doing three big films currently. She stars opposite Vijay in his film with Atlee, is paired with Dhanush in Thanga Magan , with Udhayanidhi in Gethu and is reportedly — take a deep breath — Rajinikanth’s leading lady in Shankar’s Enthiran 2 .
“These days, it feels like I go to the U.K. for a holiday,” smiles Amy, leisurely sipping tea post her evening workout, “India is home now.”
Her accent is less anglicised now, she can string together sentences in Hindi and can speak more than a smattering of Tamil. “It was all about wanting to do well,” she says, about how she picked them up. “When I first heard Indian languages, I was like, ‘No, I won’t be able to do this.’ But then, I had to learn them if I wanted a career here. Hindi was priority due to its reach. And, my whole focus in the past couple of years has been in Tamil cinema; I wanted to be able to get a better understanding of what I was playing on the big screen. My directors helped me. My co-stars, especially Vikram, helped me. For instance, one of the toughest scenes personally was getting the ‘local Madras bashai ’ in I — we kept practising that, even during flights in China.”
With a better grasp of the language and an impressive resume to show off, Amy is trying to look beyond the typical ‘phirang roles’. “I don’t see any reason not to. Look at the scene internationally; didn’t Leonardo Di Caprio play a South African in a film? I think the whole perk of being an actor is that you can get into the skin and mindset of someone else.” I saw her playing a supermodel Diya. “In Singh is Bling , I played an NRI. In Vijay’s film, I’m a girl from Kerala. I’m stepping away completely from phirang roles and avoiding being typecast.”
Her film with Akshay Kumar ( Singh Is Bling ) was her second attempt at Bollywood, after the disappointing Ekk Deewana Tha and her days in the South. This time, she was fully armed and ready. “It was necessary to get into the big league in Bollywood,” she admits, “I had already worked with Vikram and Ram Charan and the movies in the South helped me evolve as an actress and as a person. I couldn’t have done the same three years ago.”
She’s referring to her action avatar — something she attempted for the first time — in her last Hindi release, Singh is Bling . “When I released, I gave a couple of interviews in which I expressed my interest to play an action heroine. But I didn’t realise that it would happen so soon!”
Currently, Amy is looking forward to her work in Tamil; in fact, she’s in the city shooting with Vijay. “I remember watching Raja Rani — of course, mainly for Arya — and it was so good. I wondered about the director while I was watching it and in a few months’ time, I get an offer from the same filmmaker (Atlee)!”
What does she do when she’s not on the sets or working out furiously? “Forgotten,” she laughs, “Forgot what I used to do. But seriously, on days off, I like to be outdoors. I love horse-riding — I have three back home in the U.K. Now that I’ve moved to Mumbai, I should perhaps get a horse. It’ll be a nice escape from my everyday life.”
FITNESS FREAK
A daily dose of fitness is a must for Amy. “It’s something for both my mind and body,” she says, “I just don’t do the treadmill; I hate that. I do pilates and yoga. I’ve recently joined aerial pilates; you’re in the air and with straps. It’s crazy fun.”
AMY ON HER CO-STARS
Vijay : He’s the sweetest star I know…very humble
Dhanush : India’s youth icon
Akshay Kumar : Dedicated and professional, yet a big prankster
