NEW DELHI: SYDNEY-born Emma Brown Garrett, who made her big screen debut with Bengali movie Shukno Lanka, has gone blonde in her Bollywood avatar and even picked up Hindi – all for the love of Indian cinema. Emma, who wants her age to be a guarded ‘secret’, is upbeat about her new projects – the Abhishek Bachchan-starrer Dum Maaro Dum and Dharmendra-Sunny Deol-starrer Yamla Pagla Deewana. "Though I got discovered first by the Bengali film industry, it was a good ground before venturing into Bollywood," Emma told IANS in an interview.
"I have just finished my first in Bollywood. It's called Dum Maro Dum with Rohan Sippy and I also star in Yamla Pagla Deewana. I play Sunny's wife in the second film. I had dark hair but I went blonde for both the roles which are typically gaudy," she said. "I speak Hindi in Yamla Pagla Deewana and I speak Russian and bad English in Dum Maro Dum," she added.
Emma was in the capital for the screening of Shukno Lanka that hit the screens on Friday. Co-produced by Mumbai Mantra Media Ltd and the Moxie Group, it is directed by Gaurav Pandey and also stars Sabyasachi Chakraborty and Debashree Roy. Emma says she was a huge fan of her co-star Mithun even before she met him on the sets of Shukno Lanka.
Speaking of how she came to Indian shores, Emma said, "My husband and I decided to come to India to work and we've been here for two and a half years now. My husband runs a financial business and I thought I can come to India and try my acting and it worked out. We've both been very successful here and we've kind of settled in India nicely. I landed my first job only after two weeks of arriving here. I got myself an agent, auditioned for the role and director Gaurav Pandey was very happy," she said.
"I was a huge Mithunda fan even before I worked on this film. My husband and I would sit and watch all Hindi films and I loved Disco Dancer and Hum Paanch," she added.
So did she take language lessons for Bollywood? "I have a Punjabi guru in Mumbai who taught me from the very beginning – a mixture of both Urdu and Hindi. I see her from time to time since I arrived here. So I speak a little Hindi.
"I can read and write Hindi as well, but my conversation gets a little scattered sometimes. I am very good in communicating slowly. I see a lot of Hindi films and I pick it up from there too. I don't know that much of Russian though. It was just a matter of learning the script and then I had a voice coach," added the actor, who is also open to work in other regional films.