Preity Zinta might be a Bollywood star and co-owner of a top Indian cricket club, but she still finds time for her adopted 34 girls at the Mother Miracle orphanage in Rishikesh.
She arrived in the city last week with her former boyfriend, Ness Wadia, who is also her business partner.We met Zinta, 34, at the St George‘s Park cricket ground yesterday while she was watching a game between the Warriors and her club, Kings XI Punjab.
Looking half her age, the Indian screen goddess turned the head of almost every man who had come to the game. She was wearing tight grey jeans, a red cap, a red top with “Kings XI” across it and big sunglasses which she did not want to take off, even for a photograph.
“You‘ll have to excuse me – I‘ll be passing comments to the boys while I talk to you,” said Zinta, whose club will compete in the Indian Premier League 20/20 series in South Africa.
The team is preparing for its first game in the IPL against the Delhi Daredevils at Newlands in Cape Town on Sunday.“Our stay in Nelson Mandela Bay has been fantastic. I‘d like to thank the cricket organisers for giving us the opportunity for the boys to practise here. I can say that the boys are now ready for the IPL. Our team wouldn‘t have had time to practise in India, but here we had a week to practise.
“The weather is fantastic here and the people are great. I was told it was really cold, so I bought a lot of warm clothes, but now it seems that I have to shop for much cooler clothes,” she said.Zinta has been involved in sports all her life. She did gymnastics, athletics and basketball at a professional level before buying into the Kings XI Punjab franchise.
“I‘ve always loved sports and I wanted to do more than playing,” she said. Cricket is the No1 sport in India and is treated almost as a religion. She said, however, that the sport would never take away her love for film. She has appeared in Bollywood Hindi films, as well as Telugu-, Panjabi- and English-language films.After graduating with a degree in criminal psychology, Zinta made her acting debut in Dil Se in 1998 and had a role in Soldier the same year. These performances earned her a Filmfare Best Female Debut Award, and she was later recognised for her role as a teenage single mother in Kya Kehna in 2000.
She subsequently had a variety of roles, and has been credited with changing the image of a Hindi film heroine. Zinta received her first Filmfare Best Actress Award in 2003 for her performance in the drama Kal Ho Naa Ho.“Bollywood is the largest film industry in the world, making more than 2000 films a year. I have had to take a break from movies because of this tournament.”
Her projects of giving back to the community of India include the adoption of 34 children between the ages of six and seven in the north of India, a project which she is willing to stay involved in until the children reach college.“I‘m responsible for their clothes, food and education. I want to give poor children the opportunity to have a good quality education,” said Zinta, who is not married.
0 Responses to All eyes on pretty Bollywood star