A Passage From India

(Before her crossover success as Latika,the female lead in the 2008 hit Slumdog Millionaire,she was a model and TV host.)Though she is eloquent,her responses occasionally sound like the platitudes you hear from a contestant being grilled in a beauty pageant.

But after it is pointed out to her that she has a habit of answering in evening-wear-competition oratory,she checks herself a couple of times and allows,“There I go again,sounding like a Miss Universe contestant.” It’s a candour also evident when she is asked about her appearance in Woody Allen’s latest London-based ensemble film,You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,her character,Dia,a gorgeously exotic musicologist— leaves her fiancé for another man. (In January 2009, she called off her engagement to Rohan Antao and started dating her Slumdog Millionaire co-star Dev Patel.)

“I feel what I did was right”,she says of the breakup. “There were no two ways about it. But when I walked into Woody’s office and read the scene where Dia confesses for the first time she has doubts about what she is getting into,I was like,’Has someone been reading the gossip magazines to Woody?’”

The gossip magazines certainly had a field day with Pinto’s personal life after the break up. “Everyone is going to write you off for one thing or another but its my life,and if I didn’t go through it,I wouldn’t be the person I am today.”

Not having appeared in any Hindi-language films,she admits she has a way to go before she persuades the doubters back home in India,who know her only as a professional beauty and for her role in Slumdog Millionaire,that she has the acting chops to match her cheekbones.And although she holds her own in You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger,alongside Josh Brolin,Naomi Watts and Anthony Hopkins,her character is little more than imported wallpaper. Allen said via e-mail. “She’s exactly what I wish I saw when I look out the back window of my house in Manhattan.”

Her desire not to be reduced to the subject of a gaze may be realized with release of Julian Schnabel’s film Miral,based on Rula Jebreal’s novel,which follows an orphan (Pinto) as she falls in love with a Palestinian activist during the first intifada. “I knew it was going to create a lot of controversy,” she says. “But there are stories that need to be told,and if you’re always going to live in fear of what’s going to happen,you’re really not being truthful to yourself. It’s not only an excellent opportunity to prove myself as a serious actor,but also to make a difference in the world.” She smiles,knowing that Miss Universe could not have put it better.