Celina shops in Paris, Bangkok for Kannada remake of ‘Aitraaz’

BANGALORE - Bollywood actress Celina Jaitley is playing a glamorous woman in her first Kannada film “Sreemathi”, a remake of Hindi film “Aitraaz”, and the former Miss India bought all her costumes from Paris and Bangkok for it.

“My designer wanted me to have the looks of glamorous heroines like Parveen Babi and Zeenat Aman — they were the style icons of the Hindi film industry in the 1980s. So all my costumes were purchased from Bangkok and Paris,” Celina told IANS.

“Sreemathi” is being produced by Shankare Gowda and directed by Sampath.

“My character has two different shades — in the beginning, I portray the role of a 20-year-old girl and later I play a matured girl of 27 years. My character is basically a go getter in life. A glamorous woman who wants to have everything that she has desired. It is one of the boldest characters I have played in my career,” she said.

In the original, Priyanka Chopra played the negative role, while Kareena Kapoor was seen as a devoted and loyal wife of Akshay Kumar. The film’s success had catapulted Priyanka in the big league.

Celina is extremely pleased to do a role with negative shades.

“Since my role had a lot of complexities in it, I wanted to be perfect. It’s difficult for me to speak in Kannada so I write my dialogues in English and then mug them.”

In the film, Celina teams up with Kannada superstar Upendra and his wife Priyanka.

“Upendra sir was specially helpful to me in many sequences of the film,” she said.

Upendra and Priyanka are working together in “Sreemathi” after a gap of more than five years. They were last seen together in Kannada film “H20″.

After marriage, Priyanka was concentrating on house and our two kids. Now kids have grown up and we were looking for a good script to work together and this film was good enough for both of us. Also, I’m doing a family oriented film after ‘Gowramma’,” said Upendra.