Freida Pinto shares with Harper’s BAZAAR how she defies stereotypes while doing what she loves.
Freida Pinto shares with Harper’s BAZAAR how she defies stereotypes while doing what she loves.
“I’m always a little late,” admits Freida Pinto. “Apparently, they say successful people are often late because they take on so much that time management becomes very difficult for them,” she explains. Perhaps that’s why we haven’t seen the Slumdog Millionaire actress on the big screen for the past two years, until she starred in Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups alongside Christian Bale, Natalie Portman and Cate Blanchett earlier this year.
Pinto has been balancing her acting schedule with her role at We Do It Together, a non-profit production company focusing on female empowerment in the media. She sits on the advisory board, alongside award-winning actresses such as Jessica Chastain, Jodie Foster and Zhang Ziyi. “Movies and films are very powerful media for change. What we see on television day in, day out; what we hear... We don’t realise how much it influences us, albeit in bits and pieces,” shares Pinto. “All we see are [men playing] macho characters. And the woman, she plays the girlfriend, the mother or the babe. We don’t see real people. What the heck is going to happen to our future? And when I say our future, I mean the children growing up with us constantly feeding them these stereotypes,” Pinto says passionately.
The Los Angeles-based actress often goes back to her hometown of Mumbai as an advocate for Girl Rising India—an extension of a global community-led initiative to secure funding to support girls’ education programmes and awareness efforts. “Audemars Piguet has been very supportive of the campaign, which makes me love them even more. Rather than me asking for it, they asked me how they could help. That speaks volumes of their own philosophies—they want to do something, and do it under the radar too!”
With the fire and determination to fight for the causes close to her heart, the 31-year-old actress definitely embodies the philosophy of Audemars Piguet, which she has been an ambassador for since last year. As “one of the few people who don’t look at the phone for the time,” you will always see a watch on her wrist. But you might not see her new gold and diamond Royal Oak, which she is “totally in love with, but I’m so protective of it that I’m not going to wear it too often.”
An ordinary girl whose dreams led her to the bright lights of Tinseltown and the glamour of the red carpet, it’s clear the women’s rights activist and Hollywood star continues to have that sense of holding things close to her heart and appreciating the things that truly matter. “One of the things my dad always said is, when you get your first paycheque, buy yourself a great watch. I feel that’s a sign of accomplishment, a sign of succeeding in life, and [that] I have way more to go.”
Freida Pinto wears Audemars Piguet’s Diamond Punk—the pyramid facets of the geometric cuff bracelet are set with 7,848 snow-set diamonds, and the dial is set with a further 300 diamonds
