Priyanka Chopra is Bollywood's Hero No.1

The header photo of Priyanka Chopra’s Twitter account shows her in two avatars; one as SP Abha Mathur from the latest release Jai Gangaajal and other as FBI recruit Alex Parrish from her American show Quantico.

What’s common amongst the two, you might ask? In both the avatars, Chopra has shed the “Miss Goody two shoes” image and can be seen with a gun in her hands. That’s exactly what Priyanka has been doing in the recent past, refusing to do what everyone else from her contemporaries is doing and being up for the challenge of playing an action hero, probably the first one in Bollywood.

Let’s look at her stint as SP Abha Mathur, and since the movie is freshly out of the oven, we only have the trailers to draw references from. In the trailer, her introductory scene shows her with a wooden protective shield that has been put on fire by protestors. She looks stern, determined and when she takes out a bamboo stick from her police jeep and beats criminals black and blue, that’s when we know that she means business as the SP of Bankepur.

In the second trailer, she invokes courage in common people to step up for what’s right, with some kicks and slaps usual for policewomen, though highly unusual for the leading ladies of Bollywood, who so far have believed only in being the damsels of distress, barring a few scenes here and there in some movies.

So, coming back to PeeCee, she has established herself in the top league of Indian cinema, and is known worldwide for that; this is no hidden fact. After all, why would she be invited to present an Oscar, being only the second Indian to do so, after Miss India Persis Khambatta in 1980?

She has been doing everything that we expect a mainstream Indian male actor to do to make Bollywood and India proud. She is acting well in critically acclaimed movies, the last one being Bajirao Mastani where she made her presence felt even though she was the second lead after Deepika Padukone; she is going beyond the borders, being the first Indian to be cast in a primetime TV show by an American production company, and Quantico’s success is the stamp of her being accepted. Not only this, she has also signed up for the role of antagonist Victoria Leeds in the next Baywatch movie, alongwith Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.

So, in a time when most Bollywood actors are either working on nonsensical but mega budget projects only to be hooted by intelligent audience and critics, let’s take a moment and thank Priyanka Chopra for showing that even females can be the heroes, and top ones at that.

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