Bollywood actress Pooja Batra, who is known for her roles in "Virasat" and "Haseena Maan Jayegi", will soon appear in a Hollywood flick. After Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone, Batra is set to play a prominent role on an international platform.
Batra will play the character of an astronaut, a role inspired by Kalpana Chawla -- India's first woman in space who died in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster on 1 February, 2003. However, in Batra's film, titled "One Under The Sun", the actress will be the sole survivor of a disastrous space mission and her aim will be to reunite with her terminally ill daughter, according to Mumbai Mirror.
The report suggests that the role of an astronaut in this film was initially written for an Afro-American but the filmmakers, Vincent Tran and Riyaana Hartley, changed it to a woman of Indian descent when they saw Batra's audition. To prepare for the challenging role, Batra watched several documentaries of Chawla and in fact, she had to chop her hair to shoulder length to resemble Chawla's look.
"There's an ambiguous mix of race and colour. In America anything is possible today," Batro told Mumbai Mirror, pointing to Priyanka and Deepika who have bagged Hollywood roles. "But it's Irrfan Khan who's paved the way for Indians globally. Consistency is the problem and that's what I'm aiming for," she added.
Miss India 1993, Batra is making a comeback to films after a long time. The actress underwent many personal turmoils, including divorce, recently. "All the negative energies from my eight year marriage and divorce burst out on the sets like a pressure cooker. The upheavals took a toll but my ambition to make a name for myself in this part of the world kept me going," she said.
Recently, the actress shared a picture of her "One Under The Sun" family.
