Ankur Pathak (MUMBAI MIRROR; February 8, 2014)

Kangana Ranaut is just back from a “liberating” break in the Big Apple where she could take a subway, crack jokes with an 80-year-old commuter, pick up a cappuccino and hop into a cab without anyone recognisng her. “In Mumbai people gawk at me as if I were a madari ka bandar,” she complains.

Along with her delight in the annonymity the city offered, the actress also enjoyed an “exhaustive but creatively fulfilling” screenwriting course in a New York film school. And though she had to leave the eight-week course mid-way, Kangana learnt all about the significance of plot points and the need for strong characterizations, along with learning the three-act structure. Her fellow students included a Russian filmmaker, a French poet, a German RJ and an actor from Brazil.

“They’d tell us to visually explain a character, a room or a dramatic sequence. We got a lot of homework and after the first week we started working on our scripts. Our drafts were read out aloud in class and the feedback was brutally frank. I got mixed reviews for my script,” she admits candidly. The Matrix, Children of Men and Taxi Driver were some of the films the bunch deconstructed while also taking time out to party at NY’s famous nightclubs. “There’s something oddly comforting about hanging out with strangers who know nothing about your life. Although after a while we did Google each other out of curiosity,” she laughs. Now, assured about her creativity and encouraged by the fact that she could sponsor her own dream, Kangana is already planning her next break. “I’ll enroll for a course in baking in a school in Paris,” she signs off.