The Mallika Mystery: From item queen to LA

Sherawat’s appearance at Cannes,which included trips down a number of red carpets,has capped an extraordinary few months for a Hollywood ingénue. While Los Angeles is filled with aspiring actresses who could only dream of being invited to the Oscars,or scoring a seat at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,Sherawat has done both those things,and more.

“It’s very hard to make things like that happen,” said Jennifer Gross,founder of the Los Angeles-based Evolutionary Media Group,a top PR firm. “For her to get those kinds of introductions and opportunities is fantastic.”

Sherawat is one of a string of Bollywood stars to have tried their luck in Hollywood,the most successful of these so far being Anil Kapoor,Irrfan Khan and Freida Pinto. She has secured spots at high-profile parties,invitations to pre-Oscar parties and champions in the form of Jackie Chan and Jesse Dylan,son of singing icon Bob Dylan and the owner of his own talent management company. She has been seen out on the town with industry bigwigs like Brett Ratner and Michael Lambert,head of Village Roadshow Productions,which has been behind A-list films such as Gran Torino and Sherlock Holmes. She was interviewed by Perez Hilton on his vastly popular website,and is one of a random sampling of celebs — from A-listers all the way down — to have her own milkshake at the iconic LA shake bar Millions of Milkshakes.

And she has managed to secure all this support even before registering a hit in America.

Sherawat is a prime example of someone who has been able to avail herself of Hollywood’s reputation as the kind of place where reinvention is not just possible,but encouraged. To the people who are in the business of making others famous,Sherawat’s recently-lacklustre Bollywood career is irrelevant; more important,said one Hollywood insider,is that she is well-known overseas,particularly in Bollywood,where so much attention is focused these days.

“If she demands a certain country or category,it’s enticing here,” said one Hollywood publicist,who asked not to be named. “ And if she’s good-looking,that helps enormously.”

Sherawat,from all indications,seems to know how to play the game,riding on a cultivated reputation as a “Bollywood superstar”,and,to a certain extent,basking in the reflected glow of her compatriots who are well on their way to Hollywood careers. In a telling example of this,a call to a celebrity publicist about Sherawat yielded the response: “Isn’t she the face of L’Oreal? (Pinto,Aishwarya Rai,Sonam Kapoor) She’s just signed with a major agency,hasn’t she?” In truth,and despite her high-profile appearances,Sherawat is actually just starting out in Hollywood.

“I have to keep resurrecting myself,every time,” she said,taking a break during an afternoon of meetings in Cannes. “It’s never easy for outsiders in Hollywood.”

Still,by all indications,Sherawat has had it somewhat easier than most — at least in terms of forging connections with the right people.

She decided about 18 months ago to split her time between Los Angeles and Mumbai. Her move came on the back of the movie Hisss,which,despite a co-star as pedigreed as Irrfan Khan,failed to ignite the box office.

“I realised I needed to evolve and grow,” she says. “It was very important for me to get out of my comfort zone. Bollywood is comfortable for me. I’ve made a name for myself there.”

Unlike most people who show up for their shot at stardom from all over the world,Sherawat had a ready-made support net of sorts. After she appeared in the 2005 martial arts film The Myth with Jackie Chan,she says the superstar told her he would support her any way he could.

“He’s been very warm and gracious and has helped me a lot,” she said,adding that Chan introduced her to his team of agents and managers. “He took great care of me.”

In an incestuous city such as this,one good contact begets another. She had a friend in Govind Menon,founder of the production company Nuclear Mango,and with whom she made Politics,their fifth film together. Menon and his wife became Sherawat’s de facto Hollywood family.

“It’s all about connections,” said Gross. “Really,it’s just nepotism. A publicist would have to make sure they were picking the right events. They need to know about every event in town from the Masterplanner,” she said,referring to the bible for LA publicists,a compilation of the city’s events,openings and fund-raisers.

Indeed,here is where things start to get a little murky. A publicist who said she had worked on “a few projects” with Sherawat in the past is no longer officially representing her. Certainly,with personal PR reps costing thousands of dollars a month,with no guarantee of any sort of coverage from the most influential outlets,it’s an unaffordable route for many newcomers. Instead,Sherawat seems to have been able to rely on making,mining and multiplying her own connections: it was in the filming of Politics of Love that she was able to get an invite to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner; in video footage from the event,she’s standing a fair distance from the head table,seeming to wave and laugh at President Obama,while he good-naturedly smiles on. She was photographed with him during a teatime gathering during the president’s trip to LA; when asked about the connection,Sherawat said she was invited to both events as a result of the movie,which is set in the run-up to the 2008 elections. Significantly,most of the media interest in her so far has been from South Asian outlets.

In conversation,she remains blithe about these seemingly incongruous details of her working life. Instead,she maintains that “Hollywood shows me a lot of love,” a line she repeats frequently.

Perhaps Sherawat is smart to set her sights on Hollywood. After hitting the ground running in 2003 with Khwahish and 2004’s Murder,her latest films,Ugly Aur Pagli and Maan Gaye Mughal-e-Azam failed to connect with Indian audiences. She has Double Dhamaal coming up,which may well replicate the success of its predecessor Dhamaal.

In Politics,which opens in July,she plays a staffer in Obama’s election campaign who falls in love with a dyed-in-the-wool Republican. The romantic comedy,made for US$3 million,was filmed over a few weeks in Pomona,a Los Angeles suburb,and is helmed by William Dear,a veteran mainstream Hollywood director whose previous hits have included Harry and the Hendersons and Angels in the Outfield. The topical subject matter — contemporary American politics is rife with bipartisanship — could give the movie a small leg-up.

“In America,now more than ever,the most important thing is to become famous,” said Menon,“That’s the hardest thing to do.”

Not that Sherawat isn’t doing her very best. She keeps in touch with her 2,50,000-plus followers on Twitter with regular tweets about the increasingly glittery details of her life: red carpet chats with Jodie Foster and Jude Law,or being invited on reclusive billionaire Paul Allen’s submarine.

For her part,Sherawat sees her incumbent rise to Hollywood stardom as less than something cultivated and more as a question of good fortune. And certainly,some of the insiders who keep the publicity machine well-oiled have taken a shine to her.

Style expert Michael O’Connor worked with Sherawat before this year’s Oscar ceremony,helping her select jewellery at one of the style suites that are set up prior to the big event.

“She came with a million people,” he said,referring to the French camera crew that was following Sherawat around for a documentary. “From a personality perspective,I’ll tell you that she is hysterically funny. She doesn’t speak French,but at one point,she was trying to help out the crew by using English words in a French way. She was quick-witted and funny and kind of making fun of herself.”

That she does seem to have found an entrée into certain prestigious social situations says much about Sherawat’s tenacity; publicist Gross says that a real “outsider” would never get an invitation to the kinds of events that she has.

“Those invitations are not randomly given,” she said. “Usually it means that you’ve been noticed by the right people.”

Still,Sherawat doesn’t delude herself that the path ahead will be easy. But she admits to feeling a level of acceptance in Los Angeles that may have been missing for her before.

“I think that (Hollywood) loves my audacity,” she says. “They love the fact that I’m bold and ambitious. In India,we’re a very judgmental society towards women. If a man is ambitious,that’s fine. But if a woman shows that side of herself,she’s cold and doesn’t care for the family. There are different rules for men and women that way.” It’s a narrative she has used before — in Bollywood,where she pitched herself as a small-town girl defiant of a conservative Haryanvi society when she made her debut (see box).

She reckons another advantage is her “ethnic ambiguity”.

“I could be Arabic,African-American,Latina. That goes in my favour. But still,at every step,things are challenging. You have to step up your game in terms of acting because you’re competing with the best in the world. When you’re working in Bollywood,everything is larger than life and overly dramatic. But in the West,it’s much more subtle,and very real.”