Actor Priyanka Chopra has spoken out about how Indian cinema has continued to prove naysayers wrong in its global expansions over the last couple of decades.
The actor, one of India's most successful in the West, said she was told Indian cinema could not be global because of the language divide.Priyanka Chopra on the perceptions around Indian cinemaSpeaking at the Cannes Lions conference in France earlier this week, Priyanka talked about her early years in the Indian film industry and how she navigated it as an outsider. “My parents were doctors, so none of us had any idea how to navigate film. It used to be such a niche industry when I first started. If you wanted to get into filmmaking, you had to figure out what department you wanted to be in,” she said.Priyanka was 1st runner up at the Miss India pageant in 2000, and went on to win Miss World the same year. Three years later, she made her acting debut with Hero: Love Story of a Spy, before finding mainstream success with films like Mujhse Shaadi Karogi and Aitraaz early in her career.However, Priyanka said that in those days, there was a perception that Indian films were only for Indians. “I was told that Indian cinema would never be as global as Hollywood because we're not English-language, and not everybody understands whatever language our movies might be in, whether Hindi, Telugu, Marathi or anything else,” she said.Indian films had enjoyed success in the erstwhile Soviet Union since the 50s, but regular success overseas only began after 2000, first through the Indian diaspora and later beyond it. Films like Muthu, Dangal, Secret Superstar, and RRR were widely watched in countries like China, the US, and Japan, largely by non-Indians. Priyanka Chopra's Hollywood career and return to IndiaIn 2015, while at the peak of her career in India, Priyanka moved to the US and starred in the TV show Quantico. After playing the antagonist in Baywatch, she had supporting roles in films such as The Matrix: Resurrections. It was the Prime Video series Citadel that helped her establish herself as a leading actor in the West. She has since starred as the lead in two more films - Heads of State alongside Idris Elba and John Cena, and The Bluff alongside Karl Urban.In 2027, Priyanka will return to Indian cinema after almost a decade with SS Rajamouli's sci-fi epic Varanasi. The film also stars Mahesh Babu and Prithviraj Sukumaran, and is one of the most-awaited Indian films of recent times.