Genelia D’Souza: New Look: Radiant, vivacious and brimming with joie de vivre — that’s Genelia D’Souza in a nutshell. When the actress was in the city to promote a jewellery brand, we caught her in a tete-a-tete about her work, love life and everything that matters to her.

Cute, bubbly and happy-go-lucky is what you would normally associate with the roles that Genelia is seen in. “Urumi is set to break that thought process. You will see me in a totally new avatar. I play a warrior and had to train in everything from horse riding to Kalaripayattu to fit the bill. It is an intense role and I had to literally prevent myself from smiling all the time like I usually do in my other films,” she says.

On her constant link-ups with Ritesh Deshmukh, “I have stopped dealing with link-ups. A ‘rumour’ is just a rumour. Why bother fretting over it? As for the one about how ‘I am the shoulder that Shahid Kapoor cries on’, I would like to meet the person who is perpetrating it, and ask him or her when I have been spotted in that situation. Shahid is a great friend and I get along with him really well. But that’s about it,” Genelia clarifies.

‘Geenu’ as she is known popularly is someone who balances her Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi film projects perfectly. It all started in the South for her though.

“I am glad that I started the trend of South films-to-Bollywood. The South is my learning ground. And all the actresses who haven’t taken the South industry seriously, are losing out on something. I had to take the longer route to success, but it’s worth it,” she says.

On Bengaluru, she says, “I have always enjoyed the climate of this place. The crowd is cosmopolitan and I love the fact that my Tamil, Telugu, Hindi films and my Kannada film of course, did really well here!”