Sonakshi Sinha: 'I was an overweight teenager, but I have always been confident'

“I am currently the best version of myself, and I’m really enjoying that,” Sonakshi Sinha tells me when I ask about her recent weight loss. The 31-year-old Bollywood actress comes from a star family: she’s the daughter of actor-turned-politician Shatrughan Sinha and actress Poonam Sinha, but her career hasn’t been smooth sailing.Ever since she made her debut in 2010 opposite Salman Khan in the super hit film Dabangg, she has been picked on for her weight, but that doesn’t faze her. “I was always ridiculed. Growing up I was an overweight teenager, but I have always been confident no matter what size I was.”

Even though she lost a significant amount of weight before her debut, her transformation this time around is more dramatic, and people are taking notice. “I discovered Pilates six months ago, and when I started, I realised it affected me in ways training didn’t, and I was watching what I was eating as well. Once I started seeing results, I stuck to it – I am surprised at my own dedication,” she laughs.

So far, her eight-year career in the Hindi film industry has seen her star opposite some of the biggest names in Bollywood – including Akshay Kumar, Ranveer Singh, Ajay Devgn, Shahid Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan.

“I feel like the audience accepted me from my first film. It is not just about the weight. How you entertain them is more important. Now they will just see a better version of me – I call her Sonakshi 2.0.”

Sinha has dabbled in a variety of genres, but has found success mostly in action comedies such as Rowdy Rathore, Holiday, Dabbangg and Dabbangg 2, though her most critically acclaimed film to date is Lootera, which was partly based on the poem The Last Leaf by O Henry.

Her latest film, Happy Phirr Bhag Jayegi (Happy Will Run Away Again) is a sequel to the 2016 film Happy Bhag Jayegi (Happy Will Run Away). Starring Diana Penty, Abhay Deol, Jimmy Shergill and Ali Fazal, it is the story of an Amritsari girl Happy (Penty), who wanted to marry her boyfriend Guddu (Fazal), but was forced to marry Daman Singh Bagga (Shergill). So she decides to run away. She ends up in Lahore, Pakistan, and Bilal Ahmed (Deol) tries to help her go back to India.