“I was always very fascinated by acting since I was a child, and my parents were always very supportive. I started acting at the age of seven. When I started acting as a child, my parents thought it was just another hobby but eventually when I grew up they realised that I actually have stuck to it and I want to pursue it seriously. My parents have always told me this one thing, that you always need to know your ground- where you belong- and you need to know where you want to be, and everything in between is a lot of dignity, grace, hard work, and persistence.

I’m not somebody who can be easily influenced, Im a really opinionated person. I always consider what people say, and I extract whatever I think is okay for me, and discard what I don’t like. When I was doing child roles, nobody really looked at me as someone who can be a leading lady. I decided to quit television because I wanted to do films. I didn’t do anything for two years, because I was very stubborn on doing films. Those two years really taught me a lot. They taught me that you should not be scared while taking decisions because when you’re scared, you make wrong decisions. When you’re angry, sad, arrogant, any of these negative feelings, you tend to make wrong decisions. I made a decision in a very composed state of mind, and eventually I became the youngest person to switch from tv to films. It was a huge risk to not do tv for that long, but I pulled through because I had faith in myself right from the time that I took that decision.

Every time something does not work out, it’s beautiful, you know why? Because that is an opportunity to sit down and rectify why it didn’t work. Success is not a good teacher, success can get into anyones head. Failure is an amazing teacher, it teaches you about how to achieve bigger success.

I think my relationship with my parents has been a pillar for me to always lean on. I always sit my parents down and explain things to them. Everybody has disagreements with their parents but Ive realised over time that I’ve actually never fought with my parents. I have never been a rebel. We always managed to talk, sometimes for hours, and find solutions together. I want other people to also believe that it is quite possible for any young adult to explain things to their parents and find a common ground by talking things out. Set smaller goals, achieve them and show your parents that you can do it, instead of giving them large hypothetical dreams which make them skeptical and scared. Every parent is scared because they don’t want to see their child fail. It is up to us how we negotiate that skepticism and turn it into confidence.

Stress and insecurity is an ongoing thing of life but you can’t stop living and taking decisions because of that. You just need to know if something is making you happy and if you’re able to sustain yourself doing it, then you should take that leap of faith and work hard for it, even if you have to start over and over again.”