By Sarah Mills
LONDON (Reuters) – Actor and producer Priyanka Chopra Jonas says spending six months at home during the pandemic gave her time to “dissect” her life.
The former Miss World, Hollywood and Bollywood star wrote memoir “Unfinished”, choosing a title she says reflects what she still wants to do with her career.
“It was more sort of introspective for me and looking at my journey now at this point in life – where I’m content and I’m confident and I’m not insecure about my past,” Chopra Jonas told Reuters in an interview.
“I was ready to sort of dissect my life with having the time during quarantine…A lot of us constantly strive to be … the best versions of ourselves and trying is all we can do. We are all in different forms of unfinished and work in progress.”
“Unfinished”, out on Thursday, looks back on Chopra Jonas’ childhood and teenage years in India and the United States respectively, her return to her homeland where she won a national beauty contest, a pageant, she explains in her book, her brother convinced their mother to enter her into.
She went on to be crowned Miss World in 2000, a win that launched her acting career.
“My pageants were a springboard for me, not just for my career, but as a woman,” she said.
“But at the same time, I’m also someone who believes that women shouldn’t be judged predominantly or on the way they look … And I don’t think I would do it again.”
After success in Bollywood, Chopra Jonas, who is married to pop star Nick Jonas, was cast in U.S. television drama “Quantico”.
“I don’t think it was conceptually normal for American film makers of movies or TV shows to think that the lead of a mainstream show … could be Indian,” she said.
“So it really became my quest to sort of create those opportunities for myself and other people that looked like me.”
Chopra Jonas, who will star in “The Matrix 4”, is currently on screens in Netflix movie “The White Tiger” about the aspirations of a poor Indian driver. She also executive produced the film based on the Man Booker Prize-winning book.
“It’s really exciting for me as a producer to be able to tell stories that I want to see honestly and to tell stories that create a larger table in … Hollywood,” she said.
(Reporting by Sarah Mills; Editing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian)
