Pooja Bedi’s daughter, actor Alaya F, who made her debut with Saif Ali Khan-starrer Jawaani Jaaneman in 2020, will soon be seen in Freddy, opposite Kartik Aaryan. Alaya recently opened up about how acting was not a career she had initially wanted to pursue, and that she wanted to become a film director instead.
Alaya, before getting into films, earned a diploma in acting at the New York Film Academy. The actor has shared how even when everybody around her kept telling her that she’d become an actor some day, she didn’t believe them.
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“Everyone kept telling me ‘yeh toh actor banegi‘ (she’ll become an actor). But it was more like, ‘kuch aur nahi hoga, yeh toh actor hi bam jaayegi‘ (she won’t be able to be anything else, she’ll become an actor only). I was like… I was quite good in school, I would go out partying, I’d not study that much but my grades were always good. So I was like… I can actually do whatever I want, people are underestimating me. So I wanted to prove to everyone that I can do whatever I want, I’ll be a director, I still loved the films,” Alaya said in an interview with Pinkvilla.
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On being asked if her mother, former actor Pooja Bedi, and grandfather, actor and author Kabir Bedi ever told her to become an actor, she said, “No, I was so strongly against becoming an actor, so they were like, ok, don’t be an actor. In fact if they had to advise me, they’d ask me not to become an actor…” On being asked why? She added that it was because she couldn’t dance and talk in Hindi. She said, “I got myself prepared for it with a lot of hard work. I was a terrible dancer, I could not speak Hindi because. All through my life at home I’ve only spoken English, with every one… we all talk in English. (I) couldn’t speak in Hindi, couldn’t dance to save my life, in fact I wasn’t even such a Bollywood buff. But I’m someone if I set my mind on something I’ll do it to death. I was like, this is my addiction.”
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Alaya received a warm response for her performance in her debut film. However, she has not been seen in any project after that. About staying motivated through times “when things are not going very well”, she said, “In those two years I worked so hard, sometimes I look back at that version of me and I think how if I can get even 50% of what that girl was doing… I still work hard, but what I did in those two years, I still don’t know how I did it. It is very easy to be hardworking when things are going very well, it is so easy because you’re feeling motivated. It is very hard to be hardworking when things are not going very well.”
