Haven’t found wide acceptance: Neha Sharma on Bollywood

Neha Sharma, who started her career with southern films, has done a couple of Hindi movies but she still feels like an outsider in Bollywood and says “no one is your friend here”.

She was seen in the films “Crook”, “Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum” and the recently released “Youngistaan”.
“I don’t think I’ve found wide acceptance. I don’t even think the big banners know about me. But I am still trying to find my bearings around here,” said the 26-year-old Bihari girl.
“It isn’t easy since I am very conservative at heart. Back home in Bhagalpur, we were a very non-filmy family. We didn’t know much about movies except Mr. Amitabh Bachchan. And we knew about Sanjeev Kumar because he was my mother’s favourite actor. My three siblings were all into academics. And two of them are now settled in Chicago,” she added.
Neha is hoping “Youngistaan” would bring her the kind of recognition that she is working towards.
“I did get my first film easily,” said the actress who debuted with director Puri Jagganath’s Telugu movie “Chirutha” in 2007.
“But since then it hasn’t been an easy journey for me. Once I did a couple of Telugu films, I wanted to move to Bollywood. That’s where the struggle began. Though I bagged ‘Crook’ with a big banner (Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt) and with a top leading man Emraan Hashmi, the film didn’t do well.”

“Though ‘Crook’ didn’t work, I think it was a good film. ‘Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum’ received a lot of flak. But it was a commercial success. That’s what counts in the film industry,” she said.