Priyanka Chopra says her father was intimidated by her when she returned from US as ‘curvy 16-year-old’: ‘I liked attention, loved boys’

Priyanka Chopra recalled giving her aunt and uncle a tough time as a teenager, when she was sent to live with them in the US.

By: Entertainment Desk

New Delhi | May 25, 2023 11:43 AM IST

3 min read

Priyanka Chopra went to high school in the US. (Photo: Priyanka Chopra/Instagram)

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Actor Priyanka Chopra looked back on her teenage years in the United States, and said that she returned to India a different person, someone who even her father couldn’t fully understand. Priyanka said on a podcast that she was sent to the US as a 12 or 13-year-old, and when she returned at the age of 16, she thought that she was more mature than her peers.

Priyanka was on the She Pivots podcast, hosted by Emily Tisch Sussman, where she was asked about spending time in the US as a teenager. “Coming to the US when I was 13 definitely defined me in a big way,” she said, and added, “I was living with my aunt and uncle, who were highly strict and conservative, because obviously, I was somebody else’s teenager, and I wasn’t a very easy kid. I didn’t make it easy on them.”

Also read | Priyanka Chopra says she’d eat alone in bathroom as a student in US, wasn’t allowed to date by her ‘conservative family’

Asked if it was a shock to move back to India with her parents, Priyanka said, “Yeah! Mine was really unique as a story, because I lived with my aunt and uncle as a teenager in Boston and New York… Suddenly, I go back to a small town in India, and my parents were so happy that I was back, but I went a flat-chested 12-year-old and came back home, American hormones and all, a curvy 16-year-old. My dad was intimidated by me. He was just like, ‘I don’t know what to do with this girl-child-woman that I have at home’. He really had to grapple with that.”

Priyanka said that by this time, she ‘liked attention’ and ‘loved boys’. “Suddenly, I felt very grown-up, compared to the other 16-year-olds in Bareilly,” she said. In an appearance on The Howard Stern Show some weeks ago, Priyanka recalled when her father saw a boy in the balcony of her room, and proceeded to install bars on her windows. He also forbid her from wearing Western clothes. “I had a driver drive me everywhere, he was freaked out. I get it, but then my career happened. I feel so bad for my dad,” she said.

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