Nimrat Kaur, the The Lunchbox actress, who has become the toast of the festival circuit, speaks about what she's hungry for. Let's flashback to the first screening of The Lunchbox (2013) at this year's Cannes Film Festival ... It ended with a deafening 10-minute ovation and was followed by an evening screening. After that, whenever I was out on the road, two out of eight people would be talking about the film. I heard the word Lunchbox cropping up in different languages, dialects and accents. Also the word 'Auntji', which I shout out often in the film, became popular. Are you nervous about the film's reception in India? With UTV and Karan (Johar) on board as distributors, it is more like anticipation than anxiety. The response to the trailer has been overwhelming. If The Lunchbox could be the Breakthrough Film of Cannes and win the Critics Week Viewers Choice Award, followed by the Audience Choice Award at the World Cinema Festival in Amsterdam last week, I don't see why this very local story should not resonate in the land it is rooted in.Did you cook the delicious dishes Irrfan Khan waits for? (Laughs) No, thank God we had food stylists. But the kitchen is my backyard and I can say that I'm no butterfingers. I love to cook and eat.

I come from a Sikh family where food is a way of bonding and having lived alone for nine years, I've done a lot of cooking for my friends and myself. Whenever my younger sister visits me, I get a long list of what to cook In top spot it's a tie between mutton biryani and rajma, followed by kheer and halwa. What did you look forward to in your lunchbox? My mom's aloo parathas and achaar (pickle). Has anyone asked you for a recipe yet? No, but 40 minutes into the film, people are invariably hungry. What are you hungry for? Work. As an actor my constant struggle is to surprise myself. What makes you take up a particular role? As an actress your career is part choice, part chance. On my part whenever I've been approached with an offer, my first question to myself is, "Do I want to see this girl as an audience?" If the answer is 'yes', I move to how I can bring her alive on screen. I'm not in a rush. I don't want to be a shooting star. I love this profession and want to be around for a long time.