This was your first really big-budget film — what drew you to it?
Freida Pinto: It was actually Tarsem. I had never done a big-budget film before, so I was not sure what to expect and what not to expect, but that becomes partly the allure, as well — not knowing. You wanna know what it would be like to do a big-budget film. The way Tarsem sold the idea of the film in my first meeting with him — how he envisioned it and how he pictured it — was everything that I had, when I was a child and watched films that were larger than life, always imagined myself being in. So the way Tarsem sold it to me, the story he told me, it was like, “I need to see myself in that film.” And I hoped Tarsem saw me in that film as well.

What were some of the films you thought wanting to be in, on that scale?
From the recent past, I would think, the first thing that came to mind in terms of grandeur would be The Lord of the Rings, and Gladiator, in terms of the way he described the fight sequences. Harry Potter had some kind of influence as well — I mean they don’t really have anything in common, it was more the magic element of it that made me feel like I would want to be a part of it.

Tarsem also has a very specific visual style. What’s it like working with him on set?
He does. I think he’s so specific, visually. He’s so artistic that he knows how he wants his painting to look; but at the same time he is very much open and flexible to injecting things that he’s felt on the day, on the spot, into his scene, rather than being so specific and so stringent about it so as to not allow any freedom. That’s very nice. To have someone who has been given a palette to paint whatever picture he wants — and he knows what the boundaries are; he knows what story line he has to fit into — but to be able to splash those colors in ways different to how he’s done it earlier, or in ways no one has ever seen before, I think that truly is his gift. And I could see that happening on set as well. The amount of flexibility he gave us as actors in terms of performances was just absolutely amazing. If something happened by chance on set and that was not part of his idea initially, it made him realize, “Oh, that could be interesting,” and he would include that as well.

Which is surprising, because the compositions in his films look so precise.
There is a lot of precision in what he does; he knows what he’s going to do and it has to be to a “T,” you know, to the point.

Coming from relatively small films with independent directors before Immortals, how does your performance change in a film like this? How does one prepare for a role as a mythological Greek oracle, anyway?
[Laughs] I think with a role like this you have to come in with a lot more patience than when you go on to an independent project, ’cause on an independent project you have set hours that you’ve got to finish the filming in, and very little money — so you don’t have massive sets or anything like that. And with a film like this you’re not the only one on set. You’ve got to remind yourself that there are multiple things happening at the same time. One scene depends on 200-300 people working in tandem at that point in time, and if one of them doesn’t work you’ve gotta do it all over again — which seems like an enormous job to keep repeating over and over again.

So it’s much more technical.
It’s very, very technical. There’s a lot of performance aspect to it as well but it’s very technical. [Spoiler] I remember doing the scene where my sisters die. For almost two hours I was screaming and crying and losing my voice — actually it was more than two hours — but then I understood why I was doing it, because of the way they were shooting that scene from the different angles, with the wide shot and the 3D shot. There’s so much happening that you have to remember that you’ve gotta have patience and be able to pace your performance in such a way that you can deliver on every take. Working on big-budget films teaches you a lot about performing in an environment that is not necessarily for an actor.

But you must have given a great crying performance, being so exhausted after so many takes.
No, actually I was better in the first couple of takes. [Laughs] After that I was just like, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgh!” and screaming for the heck of it.

You’re filming on barely-there sets and blank screens, so what’s it like when you finally see the finished film, and yourself, in enormous 3D projection?
So much bigger than what I expected it to be, you know. I think we all have different imaginations and Tarsem’s imagination is truly one that is unleashed. There is not the smallest, slightest boundary or limitation that I see to his imagination. So when he described that the shrine and the village was going to be at the edge of a cliff, I thought, a cliff, you can imagine that, but what lies beyond, and further out, was something that I could not imagine what?s gonna be there. But the way he’s put it out there in post-production is just magnificent.

This is, what, your sixth film?
In terms of filming, this was my fourth. Released, this would be my fifth.

And in that time you’ve worked for Woody Allen, Julian Schnabel, Michael Winterbottom, Danny Boyle, Tarsem — you could almost retire at this point.
No! [Laughs] I’m far from retirement!

I’m kidding. I guess the question is, where to know? Do you like working on big-budget films?
I do, I do. I like working on big budget films. The logic I use to explain to people is that I love being entertained by them, and I can see myself entertaining people doing the same thing; so why do I need to be afraid of taking on projects like that? That’s the reason I enjoy being on the sets of big-budget films and working on them. And honestly, in terms of performance, I don’t see that much of a difference. You have to come in with the same amount of conviction and dedication to your character.

You’re also working with directors who each have very strong visions.
I think that’s what it is. That’s exactly what makes the difference. Even working with Rupert Wyatt, the director on [Rise of the Planet of the] Apes, he came from a very independent film background, so one thing you knew for sure was not gonna happen was performances were not gonna get compromised. So that’s nice to have that feeling. What would I like to do next? I don’t know. It all really depends on what is written out there, you know; it’s a lot more difficult for people to write roles for minority actors. It’s not like I’m telling you anything new. So it’s going to be interesting to see wriggle my way into something that is not necessarily written for me.

Plenty of potential jobs make actors want to roll their eyes. But for Freida Pinto, it wasn’t that the role of virgin oracle Phaedra in Immortals didn’t appeal to her (well, actually, it didn’t), but because she reasoned: Isn’t that how all oracles behave in movies?

“I don’t think you think of these things when you enter this massive entertainment industry,” she tells journalists while promoting the mythological fantasy, opening Friday.

“When you watch a film like 300 or Gladiator for that matter, there are loads of characters you wish you could play. But the way they come to you, I don’t think that plan is in your hands unless you’re making that film and casting yourself in it. When I met (director Tarsem Singh), I had no idea about what we were going to do.

“What I’d read was a draft that was still being developed. And I said, ‘How am I going to roll my eyes back? It sounds a bit strange.’ He said, ‘When we come to set, we’re going to put the script aside and we’re just going to let the visuals take over.’ So even though I play the virgin oracle, it’s not like 300 — all dreamy and dancey and then she dies. It’s really not like that. It feels more human in a way.”

Initially, that meeting almost never happened. When her agent first encouraged her to go for the role of Phaedra, Pinto felt “there was nothing to go for.” But she relented and met Singh, who told her what he wanted for the film. “That made me feel confident about coming aboard.” At the same time, as Pinto told QMI Agency this past summer at San Diego’s Comic-Con, Singh had his own doubts about her. “He didn’t want to meet me. He didn’t want to meet an Indian girl.”

What changed his mind? “The Indian girl,” she says with a laugh.

If that sounds like a remarkably smooth exchange, it’s emblematic of Pinto’s career since Slumdog Millionaire made the 27-year-old a star. Asked whether navigating Hollywood’s notoriously treacherous waters has been challenging, she responds, “Honestly I don’t think it’s been difficult. Either the script is really good or the director is someone I want to work with. Or there are amazing actors in the film or the story is something I believe in.”

Cases in point: In the past few years, she’s made films for Woody Allen (You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger) and Julian Schnabel (Miral), while also acting as a L’Oreal cosmetics spokeswoman and landing on People magazine’s Most Beautiful People list. This past summer, she starred opposite James Franco and Andy Serkis in the sleeper hit Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which grossed more than $450 million worldwide.

“I want to do my share of independent films as well, so I try to pace it. I finished Rise of the Planet of the Apes, then did a movie called Black Gold, then a movie with Michael Winterbottom (Trishna). So it’s about mixing it up.”

And while she mostly avoids the manly blood-soaked action of Immortals, Henry Cavill, who stars as heroic Theseus, says that makes Pinto all the more welcome. “It’s such a violent movie. It’s very swords, spears and stabbing people and blood everywhere … Freida’s a very gentle person, so it was lovely to have that sort of softness, that music, which soothes the savagery of what the story is.”

Greek gods take youth over beards

If you were a god, would you want to spend eternity with crow’s feet and a white beard? Director Tarsem Singh didn’t think so either, which is why the Greek deities in Immortals are young, barely clothed and ripped. Zeus, for example, is played by 32-year-old Luke Evans. Blasphemy? Not quite. As Singh notes, Renaissance painters characteristically portrayed the gods as “a 40-year-old man’s face on their boyfriend’s body.” And because the film isn’t CG motion-capture a la Avatar — and because they’re as violent as they are virile — “I needed the gods to be young,” Singh explains.

Immortals arrives, as most would-be blockbusters do these days, in 3D. “It’s a technical thing. It’s a cart that doesn’t necessarily have to be put in front of the horse which happens in a lot of cases,” he says. “There are certain styles that lend themselves to 3D. Mine just happens to be quite archaic … Not (Bourne director) Paul Greengrass, whose stuff I love, but shaky hand-hand stuff is not made for 3D. But my stuff lends itself to 3D because I don’t like fast-cutting.”

His compositions are “slow-moving and static, so 3D helps you see that more.”

Despite her relatively “brief” appearance in Slumdog Millionaire, Freida Pinto has wowed film fans across the United States with her charming personality and stunning good looks. After taking on a supporting role in Woody Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, the lead female role in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and tackling the titular role in the biopic production of Miral, Ms. Pinto adds the forward-looking Oracle to her diverse resume in this week’s release of Tarsem Singh’s Immortals. Starring opposite a cast of Mickey Rourke, Henry Cavill, Luke Evans, Isabel Lucas, and Stephen Dorff, Ms. Pinto talks about her experience on a male-dominated set and what she’s learned about Hollywood post-Slumdog Millionaire.

Parimal M. Rohit: What was it like being amidst so may men and one of only two lead women on set?
Freida Pinto: You do understand before you take the project on that it is a guy’s film. You know that before you get in. On set, I do remember this tunnel scene that was shot for ten days straight — the big fight scene … the crew, the camera people were shooting this … with men. I had a break so I left for New York. When I came back, the moment I stepped into the studio that day, I saw Brendan (Galvin), the DP, go [big sigh], “A woman on set! Finally!” I think, as much as you have all those men on set, it’s nice to be in that privileged position where we (with Isabel Lucas) were the only two women on set. We get that little extra pampering, if we can call it that at all.

PMR: With the most professional intent possible, was this the first film you ever posed nude? Or was that scene a body double?
FP: Body double.

PMR: You have already worked with some iconic filmmakers, such as Danny Boyle and Woody Allen. Now you’ve added Tarsem Singh to that list. How was working with him different from the others?
FP: Tarsem’s style is very unique. There isn’t anyone else who has his style. When someone has done something that’s so unique, I feel as if they would want to excel in an area where they know that they have no boundaries, they can do whatever they want. I think that’s where you thrive.

PMR: In portraying the Oracle, how did you get into character? What did you have to learn in order to do justice to your role?
FP: I did read a lot about Phaedra, and different books said different things. At the end of the day, it just ends up getting all confusing. So for me, it was great to know all of that for knowledge sake, but when it came to stepping on to set and getting into Phaedra’s skin, it was Tarsem’s vision. That’s when the books were put to rest.

PMR: You’ve had quite a career since Slumdog Millionaire, working on films such as You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger, Miral, and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Adding Immortals to that list, describe the whirlwind ride that has been your career.
P: It is a bit of a whirlwind ride, and it’s amazing what has happened so far. I think it has taken me almost a year-and-a-half to figure out what Slumdog was all about. It just happened so fast to someone who had never seen a red carpet before. It was very crazy, if I could call it that. I’ve come to terms that this is what I’ve always chosen for myself, and now I have it. So instead of thinking of it as a dream, let’s just embrace it and make the most of it, instead of constantly living in it and saying, “My life is a dream!” I think I am out of that phase now.

Visionary director Tarsem Singh (The Cell, The Fall) and producers Gianni Nunnari (300), Mark Canton (300) and Ryan Kavanaugh (The Fighter) unleash an epic tale of treachery, vengeance and destiny in ‘Immortals,’ a stylish and spectacular 3-D adventure. As a power-mad king razes ancient Greece in search of a legendary weapon, a heroic young villager rises up against him in a thrilling quest as timeless as it is powerful. The brutal and bloodthirsty King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) and his murderous Heraklion army are rampaging across Greece in search of the long lost Bow of Epirus. With the invincible Bow, the king will be able to overthrow the Gods of Olympus and become the undisputed master of his world. With ruthless efficiency, Hyperion and his legions destroy everything in their wake, and it seems nothing will stop the evil king’s mission. As village after village is obliterated, a stonemason named Theseus (Henry Cavill) vows to avenge the death of his mother in one of Hyperion’s raids. When Theseus meets the Sybelline Oracle, Phaedra (Freida Pinto), her disturbing visions of the young man’s future convince her that he is the key to stopping the destruction. With her help, Theseus assembles a small band of followers and embraces his destiny in a final desperate battle for the future of humanity. ‘Immortals’ is set for release November 11th 2011. Look out for a more in-depth interview with Freida Pinto, Kellan Lutz and the rest of the cast closer to the films release date.

What was it about ‘Immortals’ that interested you, this new take on Greek mythology?
Freida Pinto: Tarsem Singh, the way he visually brought out the nuances in ‘The Fall,’ the way it appealed to all five senses. I knew that ‘Immortals’ was going to be done in a very similar way. For me Tarsem’s vision was really determined before the film was made, so even though they had a script – he was a writer for the visual part of it, and knowing that he made films like ‘The Fall’ and ‘The Cell,’ and had directed R.E.M’s ‘Losing My Religion,’ you see all these amazing things in terms of the others that he’d shown in the past, I just knew that it was going to be different than what I had done in the past, the three other films that I had done before.

I guess it was the way he sold the movie at the first meeting that I had with him, how he envisioned my character and the film to be. And what I think is amazing is that he decided to play it not like the typical Greek epic, because I think we’ve seen that, that’s been done many times before. This was his take, it was his vision, and the studio was going to let him do it. You just feel comfortable knowing that you will have certain things that you can contribute, and he will be open to taking suggestions, because it really doesn’t depend on a book or something that someone else has written about the character. So that was nice, the openness was really great.

How about you Kellan?
Kellan Lutz: I loved the story, I loved the script, I loved everything the writers did with it. I found it very new and original, it’s not really coming off a book, a comic book, a story, or a movie that’s already been done before, it’s an original script. It’s really great to be a part of something that an audience has no idea what’s going to happen, because they haven’t seen the movie already, or read the book already. Also I love Greek mythology, I love Poseidon, I grew up doing reports on Poseidon. It’s really cool that I can play him.

Freida, can you talk a bit about Phaedra’s special powers?
Freida Pinto: She has the power of foresight, she can see the future but her visions aren’t very clear to her. So that kind of leads her to doubt many times, I think the fact that she does get this vision of Theseus, but doesn’t completely trust him, it says a lot about her not really knowing what the vision really means. So it’s only as things progress that she realises he is the guy who can save the people.

Was it hard to find the right balance between playing the Gods as these powerful beings, while also making them relatable, in some way?
Kellan Lutz: You don’t look at them as Gods, you make layers. I’m a brother and I’m an uncle, so for my character, I loved playing the uncle role. I have a funny uncle, and he’s who I go to when I’m in trouble and I can’t talk to my mum. He’s always there to give me advice, but to also make jokes with you (laughs). He’s just always been there for me. That’s what I drew from for Poseidon. You’re just made into a God by the costume your wearing, and with the cool weapons, and just being around the scenario that you’re in.

How was it working with Tarsem Singh?
Freida Pinto: Tarsem is great. He’s really patient, very encouraging, and most importantly open to suggestions – which sometimes directors may or may not be. He gave the actors creative license to do what they wanted with the lines, as long as it made sense (laughs). He was always hands on with whatever information you wanted. One of the most interesting things about Tarsem is that he’s such a hyperactive character (laughs), so hyperactive! He’s so helpful as well, if I was ever in doubt about anything, he would come and help me.

Freida Pinto walks into a bar. No, that’s not the beginning of a joke, it’s actually a succinct observation about the fact that she is walking completely alone—no minder, no publicity—into the bar and restaurant of the Soho Hotel in London. Sure, it’s a late June afternoon at the ebb of the café’s normally busy daytime service, but still, Pinto’s solitary state suggests an independent spirit, someone who is good at looking after herself. And that is undoubtedly a good way to be when you’re as head-spinningly gorgeous as she is, never mind one half—the other being British actor Dev Patel—of the most adorable couple in global moviedom. If Pinto arrived on the comet that was 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire, her career path has followed a scarcely less surprising trajectory—only 26 years old and four years into her filmography, she’s already worked with a handful of the world’s most adventurous and discerning directors. This year alone she has veered from the intensity of Julian Schnabel’s Israeli-Palestinian political drama Miral and the upcoming Middle-East epic of oil Black Gold, through the CGI-and-testosterone-loaded fantasy of Immortals, in which she plays a Greek priestess, to this month’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes, where she plays a primatologist, opposite James Franco. But the part that might come to define Pinto’s immediate future could well be Trishna, Michael Winterbottom’s contemporary revisioning of the Thomas Hardy classic Tess of the d’Ubervilles. With the tragic tale relocated to Rajasthan, the film will hopefully win the hearts and minds of the one market that has yet to surrender to Pinto’s charms: her homeland, India. But before we get to that, it’s her hometown that requires attention.

TIM BLANKS: Why do you call it Bombay and not Mumbai like everybody else?

FREIDA PINTO: God, I get that all the time. I’m just so used to calling it Bombay. I know everything has changed. It’s India’s way of trying to brush off colonialism and make it what it originally was, but unfortunately for me I called it Bombay for 16 years, and I think that’s a long time in a 26-year-old’s life to automatically start calling it Mumbai. It’s very confusing for a lot of people. My agent thought Bombay and Mumbai were two different places. And I was like, “No, it’s the same thing.”

BLANKS: It’s an odd coincidence that, out of six films, you’ve already played two big Muslim characters, in Black Gold and Miral.

PINTO: What attracted me to the script for Black Gold was that I play a very forward-looking, independent Muslim woman. But it is more like a guy’s film. Miral was definitely a very big Muslim role, for obvious reasons.

BLANKS: And intensely political—which was brought home by the murder of your co-star Juliano Mer-Khamis a few months ago. [Mer-Khamis played a Kuwaiti sheik in Miral and was a political activist who was murdered in the West Bank in April, outside of the children’s theater he founded.] That was the intrusion of real-world politics into the world you created in the film. How did the volatility of the situation affect you while you were making the movie?

PINTO: Very much. There was a lot I had to learn, because all the news channels say is “Israeli soldiers” and “Palestinian terrorists”—we’ve already compartmentalized them. But when you go there, and you see the real story, that’s where your journey really begins. For me, to start learning from scratch, knowing that people like Juliano exist even though they’re not spoken about in the media, was so important for me. The way I started learning about Juliano was through his mother, Arna, who taught at the theater school that Juliano continued to run, where a lot of Palestinian children were called in to vent their frustration and their anger through arts or dance or plays. The best way to describe it is that there are people who are trying to make a difference in a very civil manner, not just by picking up a gun. I felt that if I became part of this film and I gave it my all, that’s exactly what I would be doing. I can’t join the army, I’m not a politician, but through my film I could talk about it. I knew the film was not going to be accepted too well, but I did it hoping that somewhere in the future it would be referred to as one of those films that started the conversation.

BLANKS: Could you take that consciousness away with you and apply it, for example, to India?

PINTO: Absolutely. There’d be a whole long list of issues as far as my country is concerned. I really wouldn’t know how to approach a topic like corruption because it’s something that I haven’t completely understood. But if it were women’s issues or education I had to deal with . . . I think the reason why I haven’t done a film in India so far is because I haven’t found a script that’s completely gotten my attention and made me passionate to get it made. I keep saying I’m not at all famous in my own country, because people do not think I have done anything for India. The reason why I’m doing these things outside my country, bit by bit, is to be able to come back to India equipped with the knowledge and understanding of how to hopefully produce my own films one fine day.

BLANKS: Do you think you’ve been given a hard time for not doing an Indian production?

PINTO: Um . . . Yes. I was upset initially. I guess everybody in India has tried really hard to do what they do and then move into the West. And I suppose I just popped in from nowhere, like, “Who the hell is she?” So I can kind of understand the surprise, and that’s why I’m not bitter about it. My friends meet people all the time who say things like, “But what has Freida done before?” Obviously they get defensive about me because they’re my friends, but they also try to understand the other side to make me understand it better. And I feel it’s maybe a very human tendency.

BLANKS: I can see how it would be a bit hurtful by now. You’ve done all these other things since, for God’s sake. You can go back home and say, “I was just in a Woody Allen movie! What more do you want?” So there must be a “tall-poppy” syndrome in India.

PINTO: That’s what my agent said to me the first time when I read something that upset me. I guess it happens in every country. I just had to escape all of that and start by doing something that was international.

BLANKS: There’s a story about you being inspired when you saw Sushmita Sen become Miss Universe on television in 1994.

PINTO: That’s what my mum says. It was so big for India. I saw the whole country celebrating and it felt so good. I was like, I would love to do something like that one day. I guess that’s where the whole thing comes from—not wanting to feel like an outsider in my country because they’re not appreciative.

BLANKS: Did you have to audition a lot before Slumdog came along?

PINTO: Yes, I did. And I was rejected at almost every one of them. [laughs] One person said, “She doesn’t look too Indian.”

BLANKS: Did you get a lot of that when you were modeling?

PINTO: I got it from my own agents, actually. They were always like, “Don’t worry, something is gonna come your way!” But I do still get it a lot.

BLANKS: I’m sure it’s helped you in your international career.

PINTO: I guess it has, actually. I like the roles that I have played to date. I’m not saying I look Arab or I look Spanish or anything, but I could if I wanted to. And I have.

BLANKS: Portuguese?

PINTO: [laughs] I get that a lot. The Portuguese people love to claim me as one of their own, and I don’t like that! When I was in Istanbul for vacation recently, this large group of women came up to me saying “Pin-to! Pin-to!” And when they introduced themselves and said they were from Portugal, I said, “Yeah? I’m from India,” and they were saying, “Did you know that your last name is actually very Portuguese?” and I was like, “Yes, I did.”

BLANKS: But Goa used to be Portuguese, so there would have been a little cultural exchange going on.

PINTO: That makes sense. I’m going to do the DNA testing because I’m very curious to know what I have as part of my ancestral heritage.

BLANKS: Well, you have a Portuguese name and you were raised Catholic.

PINTO: I also come from Bangalore, which is in the southern part of India, where you have a big Catholic population. Some of them were forced conversions by the British and Portuguese. So I may not necessarily have that kind of lineage. I could pretty much just be a Hindu from India. But I’m still very curious to find out.

BLANKS: I get the feeling you grew up in quite an enlightened household, probably quite bookish.

PINTO: Not so much, actually. My mum was academically inclined because she was the headmistress of a school, but if there was anything that really was common in the family, it was music. My parents love Willie Nelson. And I think almost all my family members have been band members at some point in time. My sister and I were probably the only two people who did not form or join a band, though we performed at home.

BLANKS: So would you say that you were a ham from an early age?

PINTO: Nooo . . . [laughs] Yeah, I would say that. I was more interested in dramatics. I loved performing and putting on plays for the family—pretty much a drama queen.

BLANKS: I was impressed to read that you’d staged a Kafka play—

PINTO: Occupational Hazard. Actually that wasn’t a Kafka play, it was Rosalyn Drexler, but it was based on a story Kafka wrote [“The Hunger Artist”]. It was part of a joint production we did with the Ionesco play The Chairs. I was 19.

BLANKS: Did you feel that acting was your destiny at that point?

PINTO: No, I didn’t know what I was going to do. I was very confused, because everybody pretty much knew that they were going to a school to continue their postgrad work, and I was the only one saying, “I’m done studying! I cannot pick up another book or write another thesis. No, I need to do something practical and be on the run!” I guess it was when I watched Monster [2003], the Charlize Theron film. And then I pretty much knew. I had to find a way. I had to do something like that, something completely transformational.

BLANKS: So modeling was one step toward that for you?

PINTO: Elite [modeling agency] was one step toward making pocket money so that I could be more independent. I did not particularly enjoy modeling. I felt I was only utilizing 10 or 20 percent of my abilities. In India, it’s just another job. Luckily, Full Circle, the travel show happened, and I did that for nine months. Then Slumdog Millionaire happened. And then there was this tension and pressure of “Now what? Where do I go from here? What if no one approaches me?” But then I guess it was just destiny. The film became what it became, offers kept coming in . . .

BLANKS: I imagine the actual experience of filming Slumdog must have been quite emotional.

PINTO: Very. Straight after the experience I went into an acting workshop for three months, and it just couldn’t hold a candle, because the real acting experience on the film set was beautiful. It was in my own city, in my own backyard, and I had to draw from the natural surroundings, and it made me learn and appreciate my city more.

BLANKS: How aware were you of Mumbai’s underbelly while you were growing up? Were you protected from it?

PINTO: No, I mean, everybody’s aware of it. It’s not really hidden from the public. I never really gave it a second thought while I was there, but then seeing it through another person’s eyes—for example, when Dev, who is from London, came down, and I had to show him all of it. I was like, “Oh, wait a minute, I didn’t know that myself!”

BLANKS: If Slumdog was a sort of fairy tale, it couldn’t have wished for a better couple than you and Dev falling in love while the film itself was—

PINTO: A celebration of love! I just think it was both of us sitting in the same boat. For both Dev and me, Slumdog was our first film, and it became so massive that you had to preserve and pro- tect what you had before, that innocence, without getting sucked in. And who better to do it with than someone who knows what you’re thinking? Dev had never done a talk show before—his first was [Late Show With] David Letterman—and he said to me, “You have to come with me and give me moral support.” So it was very much a case of being there for my friend. Nothing we did was planned. We were making a lot of mistakes, but we were together, and most of the time our mistakes were looked on as, “Oh my god, that’s so cute.”

BLANKS: And that becomes a bond that’s very hard to break.

PINTO: I don’t think anybody—not even family or friends—can understand what the two of us have been through. As beautiful as it is, there are parts of it that just become a bit tiring to deal with. The paparazzi, for example, and not having privacy. He made a statement unknowingly once and he said, “Oh, she is like my soul mate,” and we were not dating or anything back then, and it became this big hoopla. Like, “Oh my god! How could he have said that? What does that mean?” But I guess he was right in a way; we are soul mates.

BLANKS: But there was so much goodwill about the film, and about you two as its embodiment, that it’s always seemed to me that people are very kindly disposed toward you. It’s not like the Brangelina scenario, where they’re constantly being picked at all the time in a slightly malevolent way. With you, everyone goes, “Awwww.”

PINTO: You’re right. We were just at Katsuya [a Japanese restaurant] in L.A., and when we were walking out, there were a lot of people waiting to get a table, and for the whole five seconds all we could hear was “Awwww.” [laughs] Oh my god, it’s been four years since the film, and they still immediately associate us with our characters Jamal and Latika. It’s sweet in a way but it’s difficult to break it off sometimes.

BLANKS: But in real life, as well, you two were in Cannes recently. I would imagine it must feel lovely. I hope it feels lovely.

PINTO: It is definitely very lovely. I mean, we had so many people at Cannes who came up to us just to say, “Oh, you’re, like, our favorite couple here.” You feel like you’re getting support even from people you do not know, and that feels good. There isn’t much jealousy toward the relationship. I guess it’s sweet.

BLANKS: Sweet and rare, which is why people can’t resist it. But that does raise the issue about you being so busy and Dev not being so busy. What happens in that situation?

PINTO: We have to deal with it. It hasn’t been the easiest. I literally did four films in eleven months and I hardly got to see him. But that’s when issues start getting dealt with, because things you’ve probably not dealt with in the past come back, and that’s the point when you’re at your lowest and you’ll bring up all your frustrations. We’ve been sensible enough to know that these things are part and parcel of the relationship. Especially being in a relationship with an actor, it’s not going to be the easiest. So now I’ve decided I’m going to take it easy, and he’s going to do the filming. He’s off to do another film in San Francisco very soon, and I’ll be busy in terms of promotion. But when he’s free, I’ll take him with me whenever I can.

BLANKS: Is your family relatively traditional about your relationship—happy you’re with a nice Indian boy instead of off in Hollywood with Colin Farrell or something?

PINTO: [laughs] Who they would probably never have met then! Yes, this makes them feel much more relaxed that they know who I am with. The first time, my mum was like, “Well, he’s six years younger than you are.” I said, “I know. I don’t know how it happened.” But she met him and it all worked out.

BLANKS: Six films, six very distinct directors. Tell me about your education at the hands of all those directors.

PINTO: Julian is very nurturing as a director. He was almost like my father figure in the film, guiding me through it. He didn’t want me to be roughed up at any point. Danny [Boyle], on the other hand, is intense, caring, but also very passionate. He won’t pamper you the way Julian will. Woody Allen will just leave you to it. [laughs] “If you’re on my film, there’s a reason you’re on my film. You’d better be handling your bits for yourself.” He’ll tell you as much as is required and walk off and when he gets what he wants, that’s the end of the day. If he doesn’t get it, then you’re probably fired. I probably learned the most from him, because he was the first director who made me leave the script alone and do my own thing. With Danny, we strictly stuck to the script. With Julian, we wrote our lines, but we had a script. With Woody Allen, we had to just make it very real, like I’m doing with you right now. Very daunting, by the way, to do a Woody Allen film as the third film in your entire career. And I guess I made the little mistake of being very nervous for the first couple of days on the set. If I hadn’t been, I would have learned much more. Now I’ve just finished working with Michael Winterbottom, and he was closest to Danny.

BLANKS: Did you read Thomas Hardy in school?

PINTO: It was part of the syllabus, The Mayor of Casterbridge and Tess of the d’Urbervilles. I always meant to watch the Polanski film [Tess, 1979], but I never got down to it. When I heard Michael was looking at making an Indian version of it, I thought, “Now I have no choice. I just have to find the time, pick up the film, and watch it.” That was last year. I liked it. There was something very ever-green about the film in a way. And the lines were literally out of the book, so watching the film was like watching Thomas Hardy in a direct translation by Roman Polanski. Trishna was not going to be like that, for obvious reasons. Rajasthan is hardly the same background as Tess. And Trishna is contemporary, so we had to change a lot of things around. But the underlying story is the same. There’s also the same very tragic ending. We took the liberty to change it around a bit, and it was an interesting way of working. We never had a script. Which is why we had better have read the book!

BLANKS: It feels to me that even more than Miral, this will be the film that you carry.

PINTO: And this was the first film where I worked every single day on set for the entire shoot.

BLANKS: Is Trishna going to be your Indian movie—the one that makes the country take you to its heart?

PINTO: I hope it is, because I’ve made a lot of  effort in this film in terms of speaking a language that is local to Rajasthan, and in the end, the way we’ve adapted it to the Indian setting makes it a very Indian movie. When Michael said he was doing it, I did not for one single moment think, Oh my god, how are we going to do it? It was like, Oh, yeah! That’s a great idea. Apparently he’s been toying with it for nine years. And Rajasthan is the perfect state to do that kind of a film.

BLANKS: Why?

PINTO: The loneliness, the desert, the poverty, and the backward thinking in certain families. And there’s a girl trying to leave all of that behind and do something. I met a lot of Rajasthani girls who belonged to these big affluent families but were not really allowed to do everything they wanted to do.  And there was the loneliness of that.

BLANKS: And then to move on to Immortals, where you play Phaedra—the legend is she was destroyed by her love for her stepson.

PINTO: Yes, but we haven’t really done it that way. We’ve obviously changed it around.

BLANKS: In a movie like that, aren’t you mostly an ornament?

PINTO: I hope not! When I took up the project, I thought to myself that if I’m going to be the ornament, this is going to be the one film that I sell my soul for—just do it for the heck of it. But it so happened that they had written my character very differently, and Phaedra is the guide to what Theseus is going to do next—she’s his vision.

BLANKS: But it isn’t really the “independent woman” angle you were going for, is it?

PINTO: No, not this time. Tarsem [Singh, the film’s director] was the reason. Have you seen The Fall [2006]? It was his film after The Cell [2000]. It’s beautiful. The way he drew a performance out of Catinca Untaru, a Romanian girl, was just fabulous. So I just said, “This is kind of going to be a break from acting, but a good break.”

BLANKS: And now you’re a doctor in Rise of the Planet of the Apes?

PINTO: I play a primatologist. We used a bunch of technology that was used in Avatar [2009]. Andy Serkis played the ape and he was in the motion-capture suit throughout. And he’s a great actor, so it made life very easy. But at times there were scenes where James Franco and I would have to basically caress the air around us. And again, such a novel experience! So I embrace that one as well.

BLANKS: Did you and James Franco swap Danny Boyle stories?

PINTO: That was obviously how all our conversations were going to start, but I knew he was in school, and he was always reading his books, so I didn’t want to disturb him. But that filming experience is hard to describe because there was a lot that happened. I guess when I watch the film for the first time, I’m going to know what I did.

BLANKS: What do you take away from a film like that to your next assignment?

PINTO: I always imagined that I would learn something each time that I would take to a new project, then I realized that each new project poses a completely different challenge. I guess confidence is the only thing that I take from project to project, but I’m always open to learning everybody’s style—the director, the actor I’m working with. Not everybody is, “Okay, let’s dis-cuss this scene and how we’re going to do it.” And some over-discuss it. So I’m just open to everything. But it is all about being able to do it as a team. And there are some people who can do it fabulously as a team, and some people who like to work as individuals, like they’re the only people on the team, and you’ve just got to learn to work in that person’s style as well.

BLANKS: Who’s like that?

PINTO: I’m not telling you. [laughs] It was difficult, but as much as I probably wanted to curse when I went home, I realized that I had learned so much, so I actually thank them for having a different style.

Tim Blanks is Editor at Large for style.com and a frequent contributor to Interview.

India-born actress Freida Pinto, 26, became instantly A-list with the success of 2008’s Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire; now, this spring, she stars in artist Julian Schnabel’s Miral, with two more big flicks to come. On the phone from her hometown of Mumbai—the one place where she can still go to relax!—she talks to writer Laurie Sandell about the whirlwind to come.

You know her from
Slumdog Millionaire

Look for her next in
Miral
Immortals
Rise Of The Apes

GLAMOUR: How is it possible for you to maintain your privacy in India?

FREIDA PINTO: Here you have to do Bollywood films to be recognized, so I’m lucky. In the morning, I jog around the park with my sister in our building’s complex. She keeps making fun of me because I wear big sunglasses: “Oh, it’s the celebrity Freida Pinto with her big sunglasses on.” And I say, “I’m doing it to protect my eyes from the sun!”

GLAMOUR: You’ve played women of several different ethnicities. Do you identify as an actress first, an Indian woman first, or neither?

FREIDA PINTO: I think people are starting to become more color-blind in the industry. Of course, my Indian-ness cannot be ignored. At the same time, if I am being considered for a romantic comedy, I would like if [the script] didn’t try to inject as much ethnicity into the story as possible.

GLAMOUR: In Miral, you play a Palestinian woman who’s orphaned. What drew you to this material?

FREIDA PINTO: The moment I read the script, I fell in love with the story, because it wasn’t just a story about four women; it was a story of the people of Israel and Palestine. I felt if there were any way I could be part of this peacemaking process by lending a human touch to the character, I wanted to be involved. I wish people would [remember]that there are children and soldiers dying on both sides. You can’t ignore the politics, but hopefully that won’t become the focus of the film.

GLAMOUR: You were filming in Tunisia when the uprising happened there. What was that like?

FREIDA PINTO: Terrifying. There was a civil war going on. People were burning down shops and malls; there was killing and bloodshed. I was stuck in this massive hotel with 354 rooms and only six guests. The lights kept shutting down, and there was a 5:00 P.M. curfew. But I wasn’t there by myself: Dev [Patel, her Slumdog costar and current boyfriend] came down to see me. I was so glad I had company.

GLAMOUR: Just as your career was taking off, you went through a breakup [with her previous boyfriend]. The Indian tabloids had a field day, accusing you of having been secretly married. How did you handle that?

FREIDA PINTO: I wouldn’t have been able to if it weren’t for my two heroes, my mom and my dad. Their understanding was all I needed. I’ve learned to develop a thick skin, but you’re bound to be affected when you read something bad about yourself in the paper and it’s rubbed in your face over and over. Once, I was at a Tube station in London, and some Indian-Asian guy came up to me and said, “Oh, it’s the ‘dump-dog’ millionaire.” These things happen in life. Forget about celebrities; [breakups] happen to college students, to people who’ve been in relationships for 20 years.

GLAMOUR: Now, you and Dev have been dating for some time. Have you set any rules, like never being apart for more than two weeks?

FREIDA PINTO: We recently realized we need a rule like that, because every time we think we’re going to be together, something work-related comes up. But we can’t put our careers on hold for this. We’re not at the stage where we have the privilege to turn things down. So we’ll say, “You have two days off? Let’s find a way to meet up.” I think you can always make it work if you want to.

GLAMOUR: Why do you think relationships so often fail in Hollywood?

FREIDA PINTO: When a doctor is performing an operation, his mind cannot be somewhere else. And it’s the same with actors. You have to commit yourself mind, body and soul to a project in order to do justice to it. And temptations are rife in this industry, which is why I think it’s important to know yourself before you try to deal with a relationship.

GLAMOUR: How does it feel to be a new face of Hollywood?

FREIDA PINTO: I’m happy to be accepted. That’s all. That’s where it ends for me.

Freida Pinto points out of the window of her hotel room in London at two maintenance men abseiling down the side of a building opposite. ‘That would be strange, if the paparazzi got up there,’ she says. ‘But you know what, it is possible. In LA you hear all these stories of people being filmed in their own homes through their windows. I think that is so scary.’

In an extended version of the exclusive interview in this week’s issue, Slumdog’s Freida Pinto, 26, talks long-distance love by Skype and her new film Miral

Did Slumdog change your life?

It gave me the exposure I needed for people to give me a chance. It gave me an opportunity to say I’d like to do films that aren’t race-centric, because I don’t want to be a stereotypical Indian girl – I just want to be a girl.

You live in your hometown of Mumbai rather than LA. Why?

I don’t need to live in LA – technology’s so advanced I can audition on Skype now. LA can sometimes look like a ghost town. You don’t just find people walking on the streets. My favourite three cities – London, New York and Bombay – always give me the feeling of a living, breathing place. There’s never a dull moment in Mumbai. I love it. It’s really home, you know? It’s everything to me. I have so many memories there, my parents and sister still live there and I’ve got so many friends there. A lot of people do find it very chaotic and polluted, but all that aside it’s got its own special charm. It’s so vibrant. You can be stuck in traffic and watch someone dancing or getting into a fight. It’s enjoyable chaos.

How do you and Dev [Patel, Freida’s Slumdog co-star and boyfriend] make your long-distance relationship work?

Well, like I say, there’s Skype, but we also know that to make it work we have to meet in the middle. If one of us has time off, they’ll fly over and make the most of it. It’s an excuse to see new places all the time. Skype’s great for keeping in touch with my family too. When I’m really craving home, all I need to see is my mother’s face and I’m like, OK, just have to have a little more patience, another two weeks to go. I almost start smelling home cooked food in the air. It’s like something’s calling me home.

Miral is based on Rula Jebreal’s novel inspired by her difficult childhood, and centres on an Arab woman who sets up an orphanage in war-torn Jerusalem. What drew you to the film?

Like you say, it’s a true story and the background is so current. It’s something that’s happening in Israel and Palestine even today. But I also feel the message of education and hope in the film supersedes the politics – I met Rula before we started filming and became very aware that it’s a human story. And of course the director Julian Schnabel attracted me, because when you watch a film like The Diving Bell & The Butterfly, you know this is going to be something special.

Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell And The Butterfly) directed this and you’ve also worked with Woody Allen since Slumdog Millionaire.

Not bad, hey? When a film’s as big as Slumdog you want the next project to hold a candle to it, or be better. The next film had to have substance, but I still would have worked with a debutant director.

Do you ever think, “Oh, it’s time to do a romcom with Gerard Butler”?

Of course. I’ve just made a big-budget film, so I’ve told my agent a romcom’s next. I’d also like to do an action movie. I think I’ve played the tender girl for too long now. I need to kick some butt.

Will you be in Mumbai for Christmas?

I’m actually going to be filming in Tunisia until the 23rd or 24th December, so I’m not really sure. You know I’d like to enjoy a White Christmas and I have family in Canada. I have literally spent all my 26 Christmases in Bombay, so I’ve never seen a wintery one…

Freida Pinto’s story reads like an old Hollywood invention gone global: In 2007, director Danny Boyle cast her to play the female lead in Slumdog Millionaire, a tragicomic romance set on the streets of Mumbai that fought the odds and scrapped its way to win best picture at the Oscars. For Pinto, the fallout has been similarly meteoric: Before Slumdog, the 25-year-old Mumbai native Pinto-a former model who, at the time of the film’s casting, had just finished hosting an Indian travel show-had admittedly almost quit the business because she couldn’t get a foothold. But things seem to have changed for her at lightning speed. In Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, a meditation on martial dissatisfaction, released earlier this fall, she played a foxy music student who has an affair with a married and struggling writer (Josh Brolin). In March, she stars as the title character in Julian Schnabel’s already controversial Miral, which tells the story of a Palestinian girl torn between organized resistance and her own education. And next fall she plays a soothsayer in Immortals, director Tarsem Singh’s sex-sandals-and-CGI take on Greek mythology. When we spoke, Pinto was in Canada shooting Caesar: Rise of the Apes, a prequel to Planet of the Apes (scheduled for release in June 2011), alongside James Franco. In the film, she plays a primatologist who gets to meditate on the ethics of animal testing and be romanced by Franco. Although she wouldn’t discuss the latter, she did hold forth on her Slumdog co-star (and boyfriend) Dev Patel, Miral, and her multifarious career strategy.

MICHAEL MARTIN: How would you describe the past few years?

FREIDA PINTO: I end up laughing about it. You always dream of something magical happening, and when it happens to you, it’s almost difficult to accept that it actually happened. At the same time, you can’t take yourself too bloody seriously in life, otherwise you’re going to dig your own grave. Everybody comes up with this term lucky-”Oh, she’s so lucky.” Even though I was lucky, I had a lot of struggle before that. I said I was going to give up everything at age 25 and get into event management because nothing was going for me. I used to have a lot of nervous breakdowns.

MARTIN: You went on a lot of auditions before Slumdog, and you weren’t getting anywhere. How did you push through that?

PINTO: I’m glad things happened the way they happened. I needed to be rejected, and I needed to learn that it’s part of the game. I said, “It’s okay. I can have 100 rejections, but I’m sure there’s going to be one particular thing that is almost destined for me to have, and I am going to have it.” Some of those things I got rejected for, I look back and say, “Oh, my god, I’m so happy that happened.” There would be a lot of things I would have regretted.

MARTIN: Like what?

PINTO: Like sports-cream commercials. [laughs] I used to go for these crazy auditions and they’d have the most stupid, silly scripts. My heart was never in it. I would go and try to do what I could, and then a short list would come out. Every day I was on the short list I would have a bad day-I’d be very moody and on edge. At the same time, I thought, “What would happen if I made it to the final list? Maybe that would be my ticket.” But deep down in my heart I always had doubts, and I think when you have doubts, you just say no.

MARTIN: How do you feel about all the focus on your looks?

PINTO: There’s no other way of dealing with it because there are so many people giving you so many opinions about how you look. It’s hard for me to gauge what people are sometimes getting at. This brings up my suspicious side. I feel you just have to be confident with yourself. I feel topics like, “Oh, she looks beautiful today” or “She looks a mess today without her makeup”-that’s always going to come my way, so I just think it’s all about self-confidence.

MARTIN: Has Hollywood tried to remold you?

PINTO: I’m glad I’m a strong person. In that sense, I haven’t had to compromise in any way. So far I haven’t experienced it, and I hope I will not experience it. It’s not that difficult to say no when you don’t want to do something.

MARTIN: What was it like working with Woody Allen?

PINTO: He actually leaves his actors to their own devices. As a director, he says, “I don’t want an actor coming to set who feels the need to start acting all of a sudden. When you’re talking to me in this room, everything is organic, everything is natural.” That’s what he wants on set-to get the idea right and just take it from there, rather than overanalyzing things. That was good advice he gave me, just to be very visceral.

MARTIN: The film’s take on relationships isn’t the most hopeful message.

PINTO: It’s not savory, in a way, but I feel that it’s so true: As the world’s getting filled with temptations, we’re getting a bit frivolous and a bit fickle. The problem with my character is that she has no idea what she wants out of life-she’s all over the place. I think being aware of yourself is very important to getting over that syndrome. It’s a lot of work, but it’s possible.

MARTIN: How did you get involved with Miral?

PINTO: That was a process of auditions. I read the script in December 2008. I fell in love with the story and felt that it had to be told. Danny Boyle knew I was excited about this project and he put me on tape for that audition because he is just a wonderful man. It was Danny’s audition as well. He played the role of the police officer. Danny can play scary parts well. He can really instill fear in you.

MARTIN: Did working on Miral change your political opinions?

PINTO: I didn’t know too much about the history or politics of Israel and Palestine. Everything that I knew was from books I read and the newspaper. Having read that script, I realized there was a universal theme running through the film that could be applicable to women all over the world. It’s the desire to be free to do whatever you want in any aspect of life, whether it’s love or education or just choosing where you want to live.

MARTIN: How concerned were you with being believable as a Palestinian?

PINTO: This is what I always say: If Sir Ben Kingsley can play Gandhi, anyone from anywhere-as long as they understand the essence of the character and the emotions of the character-can be or play anything. This whole thing about race-I understand that sometimes you need to be true to the ethnicity or the country the person comes from, but I feel like an Indian can easily play a Palestinian, or the other way around. It’s a culture where people have a very dynamic kind of a look-they look very Middle Eastern. I see people who look very Asian as well. There’s a bit of the African culture injected into that too. I wasn’t worried about how my character looked-I was worried about getting the emotions bang-on.

MARTIN: Could you relate to Miral’s political struggle?

PINTO: I feel like the history between Israel and Palestine has a lot in common with the history between India and Pakistan. Anybody, anywhere in the world, all they want is to be free, to choose what they want to do without having someone tell them how to do it. When that is taken away from you-when you have to be a prisoner in your own land-it’s absolutely disconcerting. I’ve not experienced that in India, because my country has given me everything quite openly and quite freely, and I have a family that has never restricted me from doing anything that I’ve wanted. But to feel that that could be taken away from me one day by a certain power up there in the government that I have no control over-that I would have to just bow down in front of-thinking about that makes me feel very helpless and angry.

MARTIN: Tell me about Immortals-your first big-budget film.

PINTO: What an exciting project. It was very interesting when I learned that the men were going to be objectified and the women could just enjoy themselves. I was excited about doing a project where I was all covered but the men had these tiny miniskirts on. Sometimes the skirt was almost not there! The director, Tarsem Singh, is a visualist-his mind is almost like a child’s imagination. He brings to life what some people can only imagine. The movie was shot using a green screen, which made me nervous at first, but then I realized you just have to let your imagination flow.

MARTIN: Who’s your character?

PINTO: I play this oracle priestess, Phaedra. She can see the future, but she never knows if what she sees in the vision is how it’s going to turn out. It’s having this superpower, but also being very human in a way.

MARTIN: Where are you based?

PINTO: I’d like to say I live somewhere, but right now I’m all over the world with my three suitcases that I’ve been carrying with me for two years. I just keep changing the clothes in the bags. Literally, I have no fixed address. I call Bombay my home, but I moved to London a bit last year when I was doing the Woody Allen film, and I loved that as my second home. I love New York as well.

MARTIN: Are you and Dev Patel still seeing each other?

PINTO: Yes . . . I find it very hard to say yes or no quite openly, because people are never satisfied. One day they write us off as saying we’re not together and the next day we’re together and getting married. It’s so bizarre and stupid. I don’t want to feed stupidity with more stupidity. I just let it be.

MARTIN: What do you do in your spare time?

PINTO: I’ve been finding a lot of peace doing yoga and meditation. I’m reading this very interesting book called White Mughals by William Dalrymple. And next month, when I go back to India, I’m going to learn to swim. I’m so lousy at it. When I was shooting Miral, my sister and her friend came down and we went to the Dead Sea. The lifeguard yelled at me because apparently I was splashing salt water into everybody’s eyes. He asked me to get out of the water.

MARTIN: You got kicked out of the Dead Sea.

PINTO: I got kicked out of the Dead Sea. You can’t really drown in it, but it scared the life out of me. I said, “There’s no way I can continue living like this.” It’s just something I want to get over.

MARTIN: What kind of career do you envision for yourself?

PINTO: A career that is not stereotyped at any point in time. That tends to happen to people coming from various ethnicities. So far I’ve had a great run, and I’m wishing to continue that. I aspire to continue until I die-I tell my mom that all the time-just keep making films and entertaining people.

In September 2008, Freida Pinto, along with a small coterie of Indian actors, arrived at the Toronto International Film Festival for the premiere of her new movie, Slumdog Millionaire. Its unveiling at Telluride the week before generated strong buzz, but not enough to ignite a storm of media interest in Canada. “There was a red carpet, one photographer, and one video camera. That’s it,” says Pinto, fondly recalling the simplicity of it all. “I thought, well, that was easy. Why was I so nervous?”

Slumdog Millionaire went on to win eight Academy Awards—including Best Picture—in 2009, becoming in the process an international phenomenon. The Dickensian fable of a Mumbai street kid who uses the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to reconnect with his true love (played by Pinto) made household names of its director, Danny Boyle, and its leads, Pinto and Dev Patel, her current boyfriend. “We were these wide-eyed babies, lost in a wonderland scenario. Danny said, ‘Enjoy this moment, because you might never get it back.’”

Two years have passed, and Pinto is back in Toronto. Looking like she just returned from a Beverly Hills shopping spree, the 26-year-old actor is clad in a gray Acne blazer, a black top from BCBG, and ash-gray jeans from Armani Exchange. She reclines on a sofa in a penthouse suite at Sutton Place, the hotel’s complimentary cotton slippers keeping her feet warm.

Beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows that surround us, Toronto glitters with city lights, but also with movie stars who are here to sell their work—and themselves. Pinto was especially busy this week trying to launch herself as a legitimate, working actor, but the festival publicity grind has left her sapped. She’s reluctant to leave the room, and cancels our dinner reservation at celebrity clubhouse Bistro 990 across the street.

Pinto debuted two films at the festival, Julian Schnabel’s Miral, in which she plays the title character, and Woody Allen’s You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, in which she stars as the exotic object of Josh Brolin’s extramarital desire. What was once, for her, a paparazzi ghost town has become a blitzkrieg of flashbulbs and screaming fans. The thought of her long flight home to India tomorrow doesn’t make matters easier.

Along with Pinto’s overnight success came a hectic traveling schedule, which means that she no longer spends much time in her hometown of Mumbai, where she still technically lives with her parents. Instead, she’s been crisscrossing the globe, shooting films—like the upcoming Planet of the Apes prequel, Rise of the Apes, in Vancouver—and falling in love with the cities where they’re shot. She talks about one day owning homes in Mumbai, London, New York, and Montreal (where she just wrapped Tarsem Singh’s Immortals). It’s a network of crash pads fit for the global star Pinto is positioning herself to become.

Pinto is currently breaking ground on a career she once worried would expire prematurely. “When your first film happens to be such a big success, there’s going to be pressure and expectations, and people are going to dissect you in a way that’s almost uncomfortable,” she says. Her accent oscillates between British, Indian, and American inflections, a colonial mishmash that leaves her sounding strangely scholarly. “I was worried people might dismiss me as someone who had 20 minutes in a film and now considers herself a big star. But it’s like, my god, I never asked for this.”

The reality is that, like all aspiring movie stars, this is precisely what she asked for. While the shock of instant fame was unexpected, Pinto has wanted a “life in the limelight” since she was young. With no formal training, the former model relied on her beauty and dedication to will herself through the casting rooms of an Indian film industry rife with nepotism and creaky depictions of women.

To help boost her confidence after the success of Slumdog, Pinto enrolled in a three-month acting boot camp in India. Her passion, she feared, was not enough. But her studies were nothing compared to the trial by fire she would undergo, courtesy of a gray-haired New York nebbish named Woody. “To have him directing you—it’s 30 years of learning, at least,” she says of her experience with Allen. “Okay, I wouldn’t say 30 years, because then I’d be comparing myself to Meryl Streep or Vanessa Redgrave. It’s more like three years, but you get the picture.” Although she was again cast as a mysterious love interest—this time as Dia, a woman who attracts the attention of a married Josh Brolin by plucking compositions on her guitar—the pressure of being in a Woody Allen film weighed on her. “I was doubtful I’d still be on the project after the second day,” she says. “But by the third day, it stopped affecting me. I was like, You know what? I’m an actor. I’m allowed to make mistakes. It’s all part of the process of learning the art.”

It was, however, Miral, a polarizing film about four Arab women and their harrowing experiences during the early decades of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which finally gave Pinto real confidence. “I don’t know where it came from, but it seeded itself within me and stayed in me the duration of the shoot,” she says. Schnabel, who has directed once-in-a-generation actors—Javier Bardem and Johnny Depp, among them—was amazed that Miral was only Pinto’s second film. “She worked as hard as anybody I’ve ever met,” he said from his home in Montauk, New York. “Johnny once said, ‘There’s nothing to it but to do it,’ and Freida is one of those actresses who does it.”

Critics, many of whom believe Miral tells the one-sided story of a two-sided conflict, have been quick to attack. In the film, Pinto plays a young, impressionable girl raised in the Arab Children’s House, a real-life orphanage founded by Palestinian humanitarian Hind Husseini. After witnessing atrocities carried out by the Israeli army, Miral falls in love with a Palestinian activist during the first intifada, before joining him in the struggle. When she read the script, which was adapted from the memoir of Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal—who also happens to live with Schnabel—Pinto knew the film would prove challenging. But as the Slumdog glow began to fade, Miral, which Pinto describes as a “representation of hope,” appeared to be exactly the kind of movie that would give her the chance to establish herself as a serious actor.

To her credit, Pinto swats away the negative reviews Miral is receiving—some of which are lobbed at her performance—with nonchalance. “Here’s the thing,” she says. “I’m never going to be entirely happy with a performance. I need to push myself in order to get better. I look at the negative criticism as constructively as possible. People are opinionated. I am opinionated. It’s human nature.” Perhaps anticipating that Miral’s middling reception won’t likely add up to the career-maker for which she was hoping, Pinto seems to mean it.

Shot directly after Slumdog, Miral marks the first time Pinto has made a film outside of India, and the experience of filming in the Middle East shattered some of the illusions she had carried over from a sheltered childhood in the suburbs of Mumbai. “I was brought up in a Catholic family and taught about Bethlehem. When I got to Jesus’ birthplace in Bethlehem, I expected to see beauty and mountains, exactly how it was described to me as a child,” she says, laughing at how her naïveté now sounds. “But when I got there, instead of seeing children born in mangers, I visited refugee camps and saw children born into poverty and sadness.” I tell Pinto about a pamphlet featuring her image and protesting Israel’s blockade of Gaza, which had been circulating outside the Toronto premiere. “Wow,” she says, pleasantly surprised. “That is exactly what we want the movie to do.”

Miral’s hot-button subject matter was not the only thing to which Pinto was drawn. As she puts it, one does not say no to Julian Schnabel. The Academy Award-nominated director and world-class painter invited Pinto to audition after seeing her in Slumdog. Schnabel was, he says, struck by her resemblance to Rula Jebreal. “When bad things happened to Freida in Slumdog Millionaire, I found myself getting very upset, like they were happening to Rula,” Schnabel says. He decided to schedule a screen test, with one caveat—it had to be shot by Danny Boyle. Despite being in the middle of his Slumdog victory lap, Boyle agreed. In a scene they shot, he played Miral’s dying father. “The way she looked at Danny told me that she loves her father very, very much,” Schnabel recalls. “The kindness that she showed was profound. I trust my intuition. I saw something in her, and I think I was right.” Boyle was equally impressed. “I could tell how much she had grown already as a performer,” he says, adding, “It obviously helps if you look like Freida.”

About those looks. Pinto has a face designed for close-ups, and although it’s without makeup for most of Miral, her beauty is still enough to make Helen of Troy look frumpy. “I needed somebody audiences would want to watch because her character was destined to make some questionable decisions. People had to care about her mistakes,” Schnabel says. But Pinto downplays her genetic luck, partly out of modesty, but most likely for fear of sounding ungrateful. When pressed, she’ll admit that she is not “unfortunate looking.”

Pinto is realistic about Hollywood’s superficial side, and the doors that were open to her because of it. She recently watched Salt simply to ogle Angelina Jolie, but also says she’d relish the chance to tackle a role like Charlize Theron’s Aileen Wuornos in Monster. Boyle insists that despite Pinto’s glamorous image, she is not consumed by her own looks. “I once worked with Cameron Diaz and she’s very similar,” he says. “You’re expecting women who look like that to be attached to the mirror the whole time. But Freida didn’t have any vanity at all.”

For all her symmetry, Pinto admits to a time when she felt unsure if she could find her niche in Hollywood, an industry known for overlooking minorities, especially Indians. “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment,” she says when I suggest that she’s the only current Indian actress who would be considered for a lead in a $90-million popcorn movie opposite James Franco. She tries to name others, but the best she can do is Archie Panjabi, the British actress who just won an Emmy for her supporting role on the CBS drama The Good Wife. “There are people who still focus on skin color, but most people don’t,” she says. In Rise of the Apes, she offers by way of example, the background of the primatologist she plays is as relevant as Franco’s hair color. “It didn’t really matter where she came from,” Pinto says. “She just needed to understand what she was meant to do.”

Pinto identifies herself with the global cinema, and isn’t terribly inclined to become a product of the movie factory on the West Coast. “My next film will be directed by a French man,” she says, referring to Jean-Jacques Annaud, who is scheduled to helm Black Thirst, a film set in the Arab states during the 1930s oil boom. Given India’s titanic film industry, does Pinto have any desire—or perhaps feel the need—to make a Bollywood movie? It’s a question that Indian reporters have fixated on since Pinto first became famous. “People in India wonder why I’m staying clear of Bollywood films,” she says. “I’m not staying clear of them, but there are some amazing films in India, made on a much smaller scale, that don’t get the same appreciation as the big Bollywood films, and I’ve never understood why. Those are the films that I want to be a part of, so I’m just waiting for something like that to come my way, and I’m telling you, I’m going to grab it with both hands.”

When I mention tabloids, a particularly unpleasant media niche, Pinto’s mouth tightens. “I don’t know how I could ever get a good night’s sleep after stripping someone of their dignity and writing things about them that are probably untrue,” she says, before jumping into a venomous rant that only seconds earlier seemed unlikely. Back when she was promoting Slumdog, Pinto was coerced by a reporter into revealing the end of her engagement to then-fiancé Rohan Antao. “I was new and an easy target, and they said it was going to be a quote about Slumdog Millionaire for the next day’s paper. I felt very betrayed.”

She understands why the public latched on to news of her romantic relationship with co-star Dev Patel, but the speculation—mostly surrounding their rumored engagement—was difficult. “Dev had such a problem trying to tell people that was not true,” she says, before deploying a stock answer: “I’ve decided not to answer stupidity with more stupidity.”

Despite the trappings of celebrity and the pressures associated with her still-nascent stardom, Pinto admits that there are perks that numb the trials and tribulations of being an in-demand princess of the cinema. “People work very hard their whole lives to get to this particular stage, so I’m not going to shy away from it. I’m going to enjoy it. It’s very difficult handling the pressure of being so recognized and being in the limelight, and at the same time having to deliver and perform.” She goes on, with a trace of childlike delight: “I used to look at the beautiful dresses in fashion magazines, put my finger on them and say, I’m going to have them one day. Now I’m like, it’s kind of easy to get those things.”

Ed. Note: Miral‘s release date has been pushed back from November of 2010 to March 25, 2011.