'I'm covered from head to toe'

In less than a decade, actress Sanjjanaa has acted with some of the biggest names in various South Indian languages. Shivarajkumar, Mammootty, Mohanlal... Sanjjanaa has acted with them all.

Ask her about it and she says a great deal of it is due to luck and the rest is because of her discipline. “You can’t afford to falter when you are working with established actors. They expect nothing short of professionalism from you,” she says.

While she has a couple of Kannada and Telugu projects in hand, Sanjjanaa has also bagged a meaty role in the Malayalam film, ‘Badarul Munerr Husnul’, where she plays a Muslim girl.
It is perhaps for the first time that Sanjjanaa wears a ‘hijab’. 

About her role, she says, “It’s an intense love story and I wear a ‘hijab’ throughout the movie. I am covered from head to toe. A lot of people asked me if I felt uncomfortable in the costume but I must say that I really like my look in the film.”

After her cameo in the Malayalam film ‘Casanova’, Sanjjanaa was offered a couple of small roles in Malayalam but she was clear that she would settle for a character where she would be remembered for her work.

“That’s when this film happened. The director decided to cast me in this character after he watched my Kannada film, ‘I Am Sorry Mathe Banni Preethsona’, where I play a challenging role,” reveals Sanjjanaa.

She says that she’s not keen on playing an insignificant role in any language. “There must be something substantial for me to do and say. I don’t want to settle for anything small. I was waiting for the kind of character that I am playing in ‘Badarul Munerr Husnul,” notes Sanjjanaa.   

The movie has been shot in Calicut. Sanjjanaa says because it is ‘Ramzan’, she gets to go to ‘Iftar’ parties almost everyday, “Since we are shooting in the Malabar region, rice and fish curry has become my staple diet. Although, I am not fasting, I get to go to an ‘Iftar’ party every other day,” she adds. 

As for her Sandalwood projects, Sanjjanaa plays an NRI girl in ‘Rebel’ and will appear without make up for the role of a slum-dweller in ‘Mandya to Mumbai’. “It is one of the toughest roles that I’ve played till date.

We shot in real slums and there were times when we had trouble controlling the
crowd. But it was quite a rewarding experience,” she adds.

Her next project, ‘Bangalore 23’ features ‘Karnataka Bulldozers’ and Sanjjanaa plays the love interest of Dhruva, the hearing-impaired player of the team, and in the words of Sanjjanaa, ‘an amazing actor’.