Sonakshi Sinha on 10 years of Lootera: I changed 13 sarees for Sawaar Loon, Ranveer Singh gave up coffee

Actor Sonakshi Sinha, who delivered a career-defining performance in the 2013 Hindi film Lootera, goes down memory lane.

Sonakshi Sinha took some time to believe it was her on screen, when she watched Lootera for the first time. After starring in masala potboilers such as Dabangg and Rowdy Rathore, this one film changed her career trajectory, and the actor still remembers it fondly, 10 years down the line.

Actors Sonakshi Sinha and Ranveer Singh in a still from Lootera.

“I couldn’t believe it for the first time when I watched this film. I looked at the screen and felt I was not watching myself, but someone completely different. I met my character Paakhi for the first time, and that was a surreal feeling! A lot of my films, I can say ‘that’s me’, but when I watched Lootera, I was like who is this person? I was truly proud of myself and what we had made,” gushes the 36-year-old.

Directed by Vikramaditya Motwane, the film’s second half was based on author O. Henry’s 1907 short story The Last Leaf. It saw Sinha playing a sick woman, and how her life changes when a conman, played by Ranveer Singh, enters the scene.

But it was not easy for her to initially gel with Motwane. “We both come from different schools of cinema. He used to be like ‘get into the character, stay in this, feel the emotion’ and I was like ‘huh? What is he saying!’ We did have friction initially. I asked him one day ‘how can Paakhi be cracking jokes at one moment and then coughing up blood, crying the next? That’s when he realised he should just let me be, and said ‘whatever it is you are doing, is working for me’ That was our moment of reconciliation,” Sinha laughs.

The actor also remembers many people dissuading her from doing Lootera. “I loved the narration. After that I discussed with some people, and they all said ‘don’t do this film’, and their reasoning was I am too new, and I need to be seen as an ‘actress’, do big films. That was it for me, I said ‘I can do it, and I will show you!’,” she says.

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Sharing precious tidbits from the behind the scenes of the film, Sinha tells us, “It was lovely to see Ranveer like that. He gave up coffee in that entire film. He just stayed away and said ‘I don’t need the energy’ I am not as excitable as him, and easier for me to go in and out of character. He is a very hyperactive person. For him to do whatever he did was more of a challenge!”

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Did you know how many sarees Sonakshi changed for one song? “It was for Sawaar Loon, it was a beautiful and hectic shoot. I changed as many as 13 sarees in a day because the entire song had montages,” she tells us.