I am actress, not an eye candy: Tannishtha Chatterjee

New Delhi: Actress Tannishtha Chatterjee says she is happy not being a typical Bollywood actress masked by dollops of make-up and would rather have her work do the talking.

The actress, who has starred in a number of international projects besides regional and Hindi films, says she is an actress, not an eye candy. "Directors come to me when they want someone beyond a pretty face. Make-up, lighting and glamour can make anyone look good but I feel acting is beyond looking good. Eye candy beauty can last for two minutes but not for the whole two hours of the film. What matters to me as an actress is performance and nothing else," Tannishtha told reporters. Having starred in off-beat films like ‘Swaraj’, ‘Road, Movie’, ‘Brick Lane’, ‘Shadows of Time’, the the NSD graduate says she is happy to see the shift in Bollywood filmmaking. "The success of films like ‘Paan Singh Tomar’, ‘Kahaani’ and ‘Vicky Donor’ shows that the urban audience today is very intelligent. They want to see good stories being told on screen. Even they don`t want to see mindless films. Filmmakers are finally realising this," she says. Tannishtha will be seen in a number of Bollywood films like ‘BMW’ (Bombay`s Most Wanted), ‘Monsoon Shootout’, ‘Gour Hari Dastan’, ‘Dekh Indian Circus’ and ‘I Love NY’ this year. "These are very different from the mainstream films. They are short, quirky and have very strong story line. Every film has its own space. I have made an effort to stay away from roles that are repetitive," says the actress. "In `BMW` I play a bar singer, in `Monsoon Shootout` I play a gangster`s wife, in `I Love NY` I play a cool, chic Chicago girl. In ‘Dekh Indian Circus’ I play a village woman. I feel lucky to have the opportunity to be these different characters." Tannishtha will also star in director Joe Wright`s "Anna Karenina", the film adaptation of Leo Tolstoy`s classic alongside actors Keira Knightley and Jude Law. In ‘I Love NY’ directed by Radhika Rao and Vinay Sapru, Tannishtha will romance actor Sunny Deol. She has previously worked with the actor`s cousin Abhay Deol in ‘Road, Movie’. "He (Sunny) is a very shy person. He is a thorough gentleman. He has been in the industry for a long time but he is full of humility. I had a wonderful time working with him. Somehow I felt a connect with him since I had already worked with Abhay, who also spoke very highly of him," she says. The dusky beauty also said that the ‘Ghayal’ star is going to surprise everyone with ‘I Love NY’. "He is going to pleasantly surprise everyone with his performance in the film especially with his sense of humour. One can never make out that he is acting because his emotions are so real," she added. The actress says her film ‘Bhopal: Prayer for Rain’, set amidst the real-life Bhopal disaster of 1984 which was originally slated for a late 2010 release, will hit the theatres this year. The film also stars Hollywood star Martin Sheen as Warren Anderson, the chief executive of Union Carbide, Mischa Barton and Rajpal Yadav. "There was some technical problem and we had to re-shoot few scenes. It will be ready by September and will be released by the end of this year for sure. The director Ravi Kumar lives in England but he hails from MP. He has his family there and he is very emotionally attached to the place. He wanted to make sure that everything went right with the film," she says. PTI