'If you've got a great body, why not flaunt it?'

Confession

Model-turned-actress Neetu Chandra's bare all antics for a magazine sometime ago, kicked up a national furore. She has been the grist of rumour mills ever since then and has even been called a lesbian.

 But Neetu is unequivocally clear on what she has been doing.
“I am proud of what I did. It was part of my job and the job required sensuous poses; so I did it. Well, if you’ve got a great body, why not flaunt it?” she asks.

 The hullabaloo though has flooded her with offers. “I never want to be slotted as an actress of a particular genre. I want to dip my fingers into every conceivable role. I want to be versatile,” she told Metrolife.

Neetu plays an ultra glamourous role in Rann where she is cast opposite Sudeep. She doubles up as his punching bag and even nurses him back to normal after tense moments. “I love my role and I hope I have done justice to it,” she quips.

There’s a great deal of homework that goes into every one of Neetu's projects.
For Traffic Signal, she spent days sitting by the traffic lights, all dressed in rags, just like the women by these traffic lights do and sold stuff.

“I wanted to get a feel of the character before I played it. In fact nobody recognised me in that costume and one of the directors who saw me originally thought I was one among the vendors until I explained to him,” she explains and adds, “hawkers may be dubbed as cheats or even believed to be wearing masks. While 80 per cent of them might fit the popular notion, the rest genuinely sell stuff to earn at least one square meal a day.”
Neetu is proud of her Bihari background, “At a time when the whole nation views Bihar as a notorious state, I would say that most of the talented Indians are from Bihar but they just don’t want to talk about their origin. But I have always wanted to do something for my state,” she says.

She will soon be producing a Bhojpuri film, Deswa. "It will be a commercial film and I intend to take it to all prominent film festivals across the world,” she observes and adds, “there’s so much of vulgarity in Bhojpuri films. I would want to act in one that every family could watch together.”

A sportswoman, Neetu does have a well-toned, athletic body. She is a blackbelt in Taekwondo. Has the art ever come handy in her films?
“Yes, I did an action sequence in No Problem. All the fights and kicks I learnt I could show off on screen,” she says.

The clothes that Neetu has worn so far has earned her the tag of a bombshell.
“I am comfortable with my body. It’s not my skin but the character in me that I would like people to focus on. I have really worked hard on my body so what’s wrong in showing it off?” she wonders.