Firmly grounded: Preity Zinta Quaintly enough the ebullience and bubbly charm remains intact as this chirpy starlet lamentably discourses on 'Zinta and the art of media maintenance.'

The hair looks quite unruffled, unlike her look in Dil Chahta Hai. Her next release is a spy thriller, Anil Sharma's The Hero, a genre this criminal psychology graduate understandably swoons over.

"I think I was born with a spy book in my hand. I've loved reading stuff on WWII, the cold war, CIA, KGB, Mossad"

But last few months Zinta hasn't been sitting pretty reading about her in the papers.

Perhaps a reason why when she did break her proverbial silence it was to a Washington Post interviewer than an Indian scribe.

"Everything that appeared in the Washington Post article was exactly as I had said it. It doesn't always work like that with the Indian press. I am well read and always scour through newspapers.

But for the first time I had a first hand experience of how news can get so grossly distorted."

The reference is obviously to her in-camera deposition in the Bharat Shah case.

Didn't several distorted versions get printed because you chose to go underground right after your deposition in the Bombay High Court?

I took a break from the media for fifteen days after that, because everything was so going over the top at that time. I only did what I was required to do as a citizen of the country in a courtroom. It's so easy to laud me for it and make it seem a big thing.

Don't the standing ovations seem called for, considering other stars decided to turn hostile in the same case?

To make a judgement about other people without looking at their larger picture is unfair.

The effort is to expose this very 'larger picture' -- shady linkages in the system that Bollywood stars do not want to reveal or explain.

But the system is rotten everywhere. I was shocked to see the state of our judicial system that still belongs to the 1800s.

It was ridiculous when I had to wait for five hours to give a statement. I had asked for an in-camera trial so that proceedings remain within the court.

And it was all over the place even before I reached home. What about my safety? I mean if this was a rape trial concerning a rich man, I would have been bumped off even before I could say Jack Robinson.

Looking at your career graph, most directors, besides Kundan Shah haven't repeated you in their films. Is that a fair assessment?

Not at all. I am in Farhaan's next film and have acted in two of Abbas-Mustan's films. But I make my choices in terms of the scripts I get.

And in that respect, you've incessantly rejected most of the roles offered to you.

Every second character in films today was offered to me. And I don't mean that statement as brag. A script always takes rounds in the industry. I sometimes have done a role that has been rejected by somebody else.

Can you recall some of the major roles turned down by you, besides Gracy Singh's character in Lagaan?

It's not fair to mention those. I do go to watch these films when they get released.

The reaction is either, 'Thank God, I didn't do this' or 'How and why did she (the actress in the role) take this up?'

Or it could be, 'Damn my role didn't seem this good in the narration. How can I be so stupid?'

Occasions that you've turned livid in the recent past were over getting linked to Sanjay Dutt and Aamir Khan. Isn't being gossip mongered an occupational hazard of being in show-biz?

I agree that since I am in show-biz I can't help but have cameras in my home.

But not in my bathroom! It is an occupational hazard all right, but how can someone print that I've secretly married Aamir Khan and have the entire media jump at me on something with no iota of truth?

Without double checking their facts they end up ridiculing the concept of media.

And in any case, why me? I let everybody know what I am doing, who I am seeing. I have liked Sanjay Dutt since I was a kid.

But I'll never get involved with any of my costars. It doesn't help my mental balance. And I don't want to take my work home.

You are seeing someone right now.

Of course. By now surely everybody knows about it.

Are you close to the month-long sabbatical from Bollywood that you're prone to take on an annual basis?

I usually take my breaks at the end of the year. This time things have been going very haphazard, so I really don't know.

You've always mentioned about the two sides to your life, one of that is absolutely separate from your filmi half, the set of people who you hang out with. Do you find the people in the industry too different in terms of temperament and attitude to become close friends with?

Not at all. In fact two of my closest friends belong to the industry - Suzanne Khan, now Roshan and Bobby Deol.

But show-biz is a 24-hour job. If you bump into someone late in the night who wants your autograph you can't say, 'I'm not working.'

So to keep your sanity intact, it becomes necessary to compartmentalize one's life between profession and pleasure.

As it is, films are so much about 'me and myself,' though after a few films you go beyond how you look to how the character should.

That isn't always the case with a film industry that still doesn't give its female protagonists a status beyond an 'it' girl or an 'item' girl.

I agree with you to an extent. But Indian movies have taken a definitive turn since 2000.

Basic cliches and formula-ridden films have reached a saturation point and been outright rejected by the people.

There is a much greater awareness level among the masses. Even television isn't about DD and its three channels.

And a lot of young filmmakers who have grown up watching Hindi films are making films that are different without losing their essence.

Yet, we find it surprising that you would call Chori Chori Chupke Chupke as the high point of your career, not Dil Chahta Hai.

Dil Chahta Hai was definitely a turning point as far as a film that reaches out to the urban youth is considered.

It was a film that the young could stand up say, 'that's me.' Shalini was a character I believed in, though I'd have so many fights with Farhaan and I'd complain, 'how can you make me so dumb!'

But if a measure to judge stardom is how much fan mail do you get, Chori Chori Chuke Chupke was the film.

I'd get mails in tons from Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East I had never seen so much stuff written in Urdu before and this had nothing to do with the controversy the film was shrouded in.

What's your role like in Anil Sharma's The Hero (her next film, releasing April)?

I play this simple earthy Kashmiri girl who gets entangled into a complicated web of life.

She gets to be a spy and realises she is in an espionage ring. The film is really big. And I have done stuff that I have never done before, like the stunts and action in the film.

Usually in mainstream Bollywood, such subjects that sound so cool on paper tend to look loud and over the top, often beating James Bond hollow.

I haven't seen the climax sequence that Sunny Deol has shot for the film, which I hear, is James Bond, bye bye baby! B

ut otherwise, the film has turned out to look quite believable and even I was surprised to see certain stunts of mine on screen. I'd yell, 'Oh damm, that's me!'