Radhika Bhirani (HINDUSTAN TIMES; December 10, 2019)

Experimenting with looks has almost become routine for actors. And so, when Sanya Malhotra was required to cut her hair short for Dangal (2016) or flaunt straight hair with bangs in an upcoming biopic on mathematics wizard Shakuntala Devi, she took the challenges head on.

Almost a poster girl of sorts for curly hair in Bollywood, the actor, who has also bagged a new project, Pagglait, reveals that she isn’t very experimental with her looks in her personal life.

“I love my curly hair. I don’t really straighten it out or experiment with my looks so much. I am glad that I am an actor but in my personal life, I don’t like to do anything to my hair. In films, it’s so much fun that you can look like a different person altogether,” says Sanya.

When the first look of the biopic came out, her fans were surprised to see Sanya’s new avatar. She sports a wig for her role in the film, but feels it helped her deliver better. “The hair and makeup gives me a mental transformation into the character. It helps me a lot, and I love it as it’s so different. In fact, after the shoot, I wouldn’t change the hair and makeup. I enjoyed it,” reveals the actor, who otherwise loves her curly hair.

“Growing up, I had a major insecurity about my hair. I used to think I am not ‘normal’, and (used to wonder) why is my hair so frizzy,” she shares and adds that YouTube helped her understand how to style her curls.

Sanya also has a message for all the young girls with not-so-straight-hair who are her fans. “I want to tell them that it’s okay if your hair is not normal, if it’s not silky, straight, and whatever. It’s just okay. It’s nice to be... well, different,” she says.

Her wigged look also gave her a chance to pull a prank on a few family members when she was shooting for the Vidya Balan-starrer in London.

“I have some cousins there who came to the set and they couldn’t recognise me. I went straight past them and returned to see how they reacted. But they didn’t till I was like, ‘Hi bhaiyya, it’s me’. It was fun. Now people have seen the look, but I should have fooled some other people too,” quips the 27-year-old, who is now busy shooting a project in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.