Sanjana Sanghi isn’t taking the conventional Hindi film heroine route. At a stage when actors tend to choose roles with a mass appeal, she has opted for films where she gets to act alongside veterans.

In the upcoming movie Dhak Dhak, for instance, she will be sharing screen space with actor Ratna Pathak Shah, and in another project, actor Pankaj Tripathi will be playing her father. While working with such eminent names could get any young artiste jittery, for Sanghi, this has never been the case.

“Ever since my childhood, I haven’t been nervous or intimidated by people I look up to and respect. Somehow, I don’t go into that space. The credit also goes to how amazing Pankaj sir and Ratna ma’am are as people,” the 26-year-old tells us.

Equating them to “mentors”, the Rashtra Kavach Om (2022) actor adds, “They are so giving. [I learn a lot by] not just observing them, but the little things tell me about how I can improve my performance in a scene. As an actor, I feel lucky to get that... Pankaj ji, in fact, has literally been like a father to me since we were prepping.”

Interestingly, this is her second film with Tripathi, after Fukrey Returns (2017). But, things are different this time. “I never had a scene with him, I actually didn’t realize that we had been in the same film! Yes, technically this will be the second one, but this is just on another plane,” she quips.