Freida Pinto
Freida Selena Pinto is an Indian actress who has appeared mainly in American and British films. Born and raised in Mumbai, Maharashtra, she resolved at a young age to become an actress. As a student at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai she took part in amateur plays. After graduation, she briefly worked as a model and then as a television presenter.
Pinto rose to prominence with her film debut in the drama Slumdog Millionaire, winning a SAG Award and earning a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress. She subsequently starred in Miral, Trishna, and Desert Dancer. She also saw commercial success with the science fiction film Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and the epic fantasy action film Immortals. Pinto's other notable roles include You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Love Sonia, Hillbilly Elegy, and Mr. Malcolm's List. She also starred in the Showtime miniseries Guerrilla, and had a recurring role in the Hulu series The Path.
Along with her film career, she promotes humanitarian causes.
Early life and background
Pinto was born on 18 October 1984 in Mumbai, Maharashtra to Konkani Mangalorean Catholic parents from Mangalore, Karnataka. Her mother, Sylvia Pinto, was the principal of St. John's Universal School in Goregaon, West Mumbai, and her father, Frederick Pinto, was a senior branch manager for the Bank of Baroda in Bandra, West Mumbai.Pinto had a middle class upbringing in the suburb of Malad, North Mumbai. She first wanted to be an actress when she was five years old, often dressing up and imitating television actors during her childhood. She later recalled being inspired by Sushmita Sen's victory in the 1994 Miss Universe competition, explaining that "the country was really proud of her, and I was like, one day, I want to do the same". Pinto attended the Carmel of St. Joseph School in Malad, North Mumbai and then studied at St. Xavier's College, Mumbai in Fort, South Mumbai. Her major was in English literature, with minors in psychology and economics. At college, she participated in amateur theatre, but declined acting and modeling assignments until her graduation in 2005.
Despite her interest in acting from an early age, Pinto was undecided on what career to take until watching Monster while at college. She stated: "I guess it was when I watched Monster... I pretty much knew. I had to find a way. I had to do something like that, something completely transformational." In 2005, Pinto began a modeling career and joined Elite Model Management India, with whom she worked for two and a half years. She was featured in several television and print advertisements for products such as Wrigley's Chewing Gum, Škoda, Vodafone India, Airtel, Visa, eBay, and De Beers.
Around the same time, Pinto began going to auditions for films and television shows. She was chosen to host Full Circle, an international travel show that aired on Zee International Asia Pacific between 2006 and 2008. The show took her to countries all over the world, including Afghanistan, Fiji, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. Her auditions for both Bollywood and Hollywood productions, including Shimit Amin's Bollywood sports film Chak De! India , and for the role of Bond girl Camille Montes in Marc Forster's Quantum of Solace, were largely unsuccessful. Pinto later claimed that it was a good learning experience, stating that she was "glad things happened the way they happened. I needed to be rejected, and I needed to learn that it's part of the game... I can have 100 rejections, but I'm sure there's going to be one particular thing that is almost destined for me to have."
Acting career
2008–2010: Beginnings and breakthrough
In 2007, Pinto's modeling agency selected her and six other models to audition for the female lead in Danny Boyle's film Slumdog Millionaire after a request by its casting director. After undergoing six months of extensive auditions, Pinto won the role of Latika, the love interest of the main character Jamal, played by Dev Patel. During the post-production phase, she attended an acting course at the Barry John Acting Studio in Mumbai. Although the course taught her about the "technical aspects" of acting, she stated that "in terms of the actual experience, there's nothing like going out there and actually playing the part... So for me, my favorite acting school was the six months of auditioning with Danny Boyle". Pinto won the Breakthrough Performance Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, along with other cast members from the film.She was also nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role at the BAFTA Awards. Pinto's performance in the film drew little attention from critics as her screen presence in the film was limited. The Telegraph opined "it's difficult to form an opinion" on her character; its columnist Bharathi S. Pradhan noted "Slumdog Millionaire wasn't really a test of Freida's acting abilities."
File:Freida Pinto & Rula Jebreal.jpg|thumbnail|right|Pinto and Rula Jebreal attend the screening of Miral at the 18th Annual Hamptons International Film Festival in October 2010|alt=Freida Pinto and Rula Jebreal
Following the success of Slumdog Millionaire, Pinto signed up for two art house productions. In Woody Allen's comedy-drama You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, she acted alongside Antonio Banderas, Josh Brolin, Anthony Hopkins, Anupam Kher, and Naomi Watts. She played a "mystery woman" who draws the attention of the character played by Brolin. Pinto then starred in Julian Schnabel's Miral, based on a semi-biographical novel by Rula Jebreal, playing an orphaned Palestinian woman who grew up in a refugee camp in Israel. Before the film's production began in the Palestinian territories, Pinto prepared for the role by visiting several refugee camps in the area. She stated that she could relate to her character's experiences because of her knowledge about her relatives' experiences during the partition of India in the 1940s. The film received largely negative reviews, and Pinto's performance divided critics: Geoffrey Macnab of The Independent wrote that "Miral... is played very engagingly by Freida Pinto", while Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian stated that " looks uneasy and miscast".
2011–2018
Pinto had four releases in 2011. The first was the science fiction film Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a reboot of the Planet of the Apes series. She played the role of Caroline Aranha, a primatologist who falls in love with the main character, played by James Franco. To prepare for her role, she researched the career of English anthropologist Jane Goodall. The film went on to gross million worldwide; it remains her highest-grossing film as of April 2016. Pinto's character received criticism for being too one-dimensional: Anthony Quinn of The Independent called it a "failure", and Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter described the character as the most "boringly decorous tag-along girlfriend seen onscreen in years". Pinto's second screen appearance of the year was playing the title character in Michael Winterbottom's Trishna. The film, based on Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles, gave Pinto the role of a teenage Rajasthani peasant, who leaves her family to work for a British-born Indian hotelier, played by Riz Ahmed. Nishat Bari of India Today called Pinto's role her "most substantial" one to that point. Philip French of The Guardian stated that Pinto "captivates" in the lead role, while Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called her performance "touchingly beautiful". In contrast, Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that Pinto is "one of loveliest attractions, but she and her director haven't been able to give Trishna a pulse".Pinto's third film role in 2011 was playing Princess Lailah in the poorly received independent film Day of the Falcon, a period drama set in the 1930s Middle East, where she was cast alongside Antonio Banderas, Mark Strong and Liya Kebede. Despite overall negative reviews, Andy Webster of The New York Times described Pinto and Kebede as "refreshing" and praised their "independent presences amid the stiflingly male-dominated milieu". Pinto's final screen appearance of the year was in the fantasy-action film Immortals, in which she played the oracle priestess Phaedra. Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, Todd McCarthy remarked that Phaedra was "capably embodied" by Pinto.
After 2011, Pinto had no new film releases for two years. In 2013, she appeared in the music video for Bruno Mars' single "Gorilla". She was criticised by the Indian media for appearing in the video; The Times of India and Hindustan Times dismissed it as little more than "dirty dancing". In the same year, Pinto was also one of the narrators in the documentary film Girl Rising, produced for the campaign of the same name which promotes access to education for girls all over the world.
Pinto's first cinematic appearance in two years was in the biographical drama Desert Dancer, which was about the life of Iranian choreographer Afshin Ghaffarian. She played the heroin-addicted Elaheh, the love interest of the lead character played by Reece Ritchie. The role required her to do dance training consisting of eight hours of rehearsals a day for 14 weeks. She also attended a few sessions at rehabilitation centres in the United States to prepare for her role. It received largely negative reviews, although Andy Webster of The New York Times noted that "Pinto, even with an unfocused and underwritten role, is captivating".
Pinto's first film of 2015 was Terrence Malick's Knight of Cups, which featured an ensemble cast including Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, and Antonio Banderas. She played Helen, a model with whom Bale embarks on a "dalliance". She talked about acting without a script: "It is definitely a bit nerve-racking on the first day because you don't know where you are going to go. But once you figure that out, then it doesn't really matter. It is actually very relaxing. It is fun and liberating. It is an experience that I completely embrace". She was among the 100 narrators of Unity, a documentary that explores the relationships between Earth's species. Her third release of that year was the Colombian action film Blunt Force Trauma, in which she starred opposite Ryan Kwanten and Mickey Rourke as a woman looking for her brother's murderer. In 2015, Pinto worked on Andy Serkis' Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle, a motion capture adventure fantasy film based on Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. She portrays Mowgli's adoptive mother, Messua, in the film.