Aneet Padda is more than your girl next door

On a video call with me on a Saturday afternoon, Aneet Padda has adorned loose waves and a smudge of kohl—the minimal makeup look—similar to her character Vaani Batra in Saiyaara. Unlike the introverted Vaani, who opens up through the prodding of Krish Kapoor—played by Ahaan Panday—22-year-old Padda needs no such nudge, as she seamlessly stitches her heart and syntax, offering unfiltered clarity that belies her age.

It has been a few weeks since the romantic drama produced by Yash Raj Films, and directed by Mohit Suri, released to a sweeping (and weeping) response. In a filmic landscape that was presumed to have shifted to thumping male bravado, Saiyaara, which underscores the softness of the lover’s starry eyes, feels like a unicorn sighting. And this is not just because of the box office numbers—worldwide the film has grossed ₹578 crores approximately—but also because of how it has catapulted its two young stars, Padda and Panday, into a stratosphere of stardom that has evaded newcomers (and even bigger, established stars) in recent years.

Padda has been processing the love through a level-headed space, of “acknowledging” it and “taking responsibility” for it, even though one of her idols, Alia Bhatt, took the initiative to effusively praise the film and its two leads on Instagram, and “gushed” about the film for 10 minutes on a phone call with her. Dropping the term “parasocial relationship”— generally used to critique the entitlement of fans—in an optimistic sense, she states that the “beauty” of being an actor—and here she is referring to Bhatt—is the ripple effect that their film persona can cause. “I would talk to myself in the bathroom mirror (when I was young) and practice all the (Bhatt’s) monologues and think ‘how can I do it?’, and then it would be ‘how can I do it my way?’” Padda recalls.

Padda’s instinct for storytelling is palpable as she shifts between intonations and different emotional registers with an intuitive ease. Academically driven, but lost without a creative outlet, Padda was a dreamer as a child, who was never a “casual cinema goer”. At the age of 10, she performed in a play in her school in Amritsar. “It (acting) was this interesting way of being weird, but it was applauded,” Padda says. The sense of being applauded for her weirdness stuck.

But this relationship to the craft was neither linear, nor rosy—once she hit adolescence, her head was crowded with scepticism. A lack of support from her friends, as well as her father (who had also wanted to be an actor at one point) began to needle her insecurity. Her voice drops as she gets into it: “For the longest time I told myself ‘you are so silly for even wanting to do anything about this’. I stopped dreaming for a while”.

Padda smoothly cushions this vulnerability with amusing anecdotes. When she was 17, realising “I have to do this”, she began to Google acting auditions. She hired her friends to help her practice lines, and then gently let them go because the “chemistry was a bit off”, (she says amid laughs), realising she had the most compatibility with herself.

As she relentlessly googled, Padda landed on shady websites that were “scams, basically”. Almost every production house in the Hindi film industry has an audition tape and “a horrible biodata and Snapchat filter pictures” from Padda, who sent cold emails to 50-70 of them during the pandemic when she was desperate to find something credible. She realised, then, that it was casting agencies who negotiated for opportunities on behalf of the actors.

Once she auditioned through one of them and landed an instant coffee advertisement, it arrived with mixed feelings for the actor. Her fidgety parents did not know how earnestly she was pursuing this, but the two were roped in because of the dictate of their parent figure—her grandmother—who told her “Tu das ke aa, main dekh lungi (You tell them, and leave it up to me)”. Once the ad aired, Padda, who had felt young, helpless, and very outside-the-film-industry at one point, began to see a clearer path, dotted with auditions.

There is a self-awareness with which Padda speaks about the past, easily slipping into the “why” of what was happening. Saiyaara is not Padda’s first project, even if it snowballed her into stardom. During Salaam Venky (2022) and Big Girls Don’t Cry (BGDC, 2024)—both of which released to middling reviews—Padda was plagued with anxiety and melancholy. She played the love interest of a man suffering from muscular dystrophy in the former, and in the latter, a rebellious teenager in a boarding school. “From the craft point of view, I was still discovering myself. I was not trained in acting—I would just do things from the heart. But it was happening very fast, I couldn’t process a lot of things,” Padda said.

Her performance in BGDC was applauded, but Padda was unsettled as she straddled college and acting. On set, things also felt “culturally different”, because she was surrounded by these “big people”. Swamped with contract negotiations and travel, Padda began to emotionally fray, even as she kept up a sorted appearance. “I didn’t know if I would make it. Of course, I was doing things, but I didn’t know if I’d have enough safety that I’d be able to make money only off of this. So I was still looking for other options, and what schools to apply to after college,” the actor shares.

Who kept her buoyed were Nitya Mehra and Karan Kapadia, the creator and director of BGDC, respectively, who became her “Bombay parents”. At the age of 19, when she especially needed some assurance about her potential and future, they convinced her of her talent and her ability to be someone in an industry that can enlarge people’s ego but can also make newcomers feel timid. Also of help was casting director Shanoo Sharma’s phone call who asked Padda to audition for Yash Raj Films at that age. However, Padda was unable to relent to the request, given her fidelity towards college work and all-over-the-place travel schedule. “Even getting that call from her (Sharma) was huge,” Padda shares.

Once Padda was in the clear after her graduation, and promoting BGDC in Mumbai, she reached out to Sharma. “Shaking in the car” before their chat, Padda found less reasons to be intimidated once she began talking to Sharma. The casting director assuaged her nervousness and asked her to come in for an audition. That film would turn out to be Saiyaara.

“With Saiyaara I think I started enjoying the craft so much more, because that’s when I felt a sense of safety, and thought “ab mai sirf acting kar sakti hu (I can just focus on acting now),” Padda says. This comfort extends beyond the role itself. The camaraderie she has with her co-star Panday is evident, especially on the two’s Instagram grid. The actors had also gone to Mount Mary’s Basilica in Bandra West to pray that she lands the role. The affection came from being unfiltered. “We’ve just been too much of ourselves,” Padda remarks.

Suri would put Padda and Panday at ease, telling them even he was figuring it out, which Padda says is “such a lie” given how the director was able to draw exactly what he wanted. “This film hasn’t just done well in terms of business. It takes a village to make a film, whether it was the crew, or us as actors, the direction team—everybody on set worked hard. Maybe it was just that? They (audience) could feel the heart of the film,” the actor says, who also at some point during the conversation acknowledged that she processes everything emotionally, because it’s her “lens on life in general”.

What is next for the young star? If brand deals are any indicator, Padda has already arrived. She is now the face of Lakmé—a beauty behemoth—and jewellery brand Mia by Tanishq, both of which have long been associated with Bollywood A-listers. She is coy about sharing the details of her next script, but is clear-eyed on wanting to give the love back, and not letting the extra eyes trip her into feeling pressure. “I do feel a lot of responsibility, because this (fame) doesn’t come easy. (But) I wouldn’t look at the upcoming projects in superlatives—‘Was it worse? Was it better? Is my next thing going to be a big thing?’ Because my job, again, is to focus on my craft. To bring as much as truth I can to my characters. And work hard—that’s the only thing in my hands,” Padda says, “The life that I am living in Amritsar right now doesn’t warrant for me to have any of these intense reactions or emotional journeys that I see all these people in cinema have. I just wanted to be there.”

Shooting with Aneet by Snigdha Ahuja 

There is a certain kind of curiosity that pervades the set when a celebrity makes their appearance. As a journalist, the experience is usually mixed, and accompanied by concerns— would the moodboard match the vision of the creative team? What if there is a last-minute issue with the fits? It’s a forever nudge and pull in opposite directions, with the challenging pursuit for both editorial satisfaction and Instagram traction. For this shoot, this feeling was heightened. What should one expect from a young star like Aneet? New to the game, but pushed into the limelight with such speed and force that one tends to forget how overwhelming it would have been for a 22-year-old, with no Bollywood backing.

As any celeb shoot goes, it was also prudent to prepare oneself for some starry behaviour. And then, there was the elusive expectation of humility that usually arrives when the subject understands that more often than not, the stardust is as good as their last film.

However, for Aneet, it was only humility that existed and persisted on the set, as she shot her first solo cover. A set that also featured photographer Taras Taraporvala, the quiet lensman, and Divyak D’Souza, the celebrity stylist aka the purveyor of witticisms and comic relief.

Aneet faced the camera with the vulnerability of someone who was still finding her footing, without being afraid to express her fun personality. The same come across in her effortless poses, especially in a sequinned, gold AFEW dress. Photographed on a sofa, she made the impromptu decision to stand atop it (in stilt-high heels, mind you), dance about a bit and get into a character that she built on the spot. And then, her love for a bowl of cherries (that she dutifully finished) and the indulgent vanilla cake by Mumbai’s popular Magnolia bakery that she unapologetically bit into (and carried an extra slice to the green room—you know, just in case). Aneet made the props look like they belonged to the room, just like she did.

The energy offered an insight into the Gen Z star’s authentic persona. The fresh-faced, tall girl with a deep voice, who arrived wearing a pair of rose-tinted glasses, telling me she picked them, of course, because she was now a Cosmo girl.

Editor: Snigdha Ahuja (@snigdha.ahuja)
Digital Editor: Sonal Ved (@sonalved)
Interview: J Shruti (@shrutijn6891)
Photographer: Taras Taraporvala (@taras84)
Stylist: Divyak D’Souza (@divyakdsouza)
Cover Design: Mandeep Singh Khokhar (@mandy_khokhar19)
Makeup Artist: Mehak Oberoi (@mehakoberoi)
Hair Artist: Rohit Bhatkar (@rohit_bhatkar)
Editorial Coordinator: Shalini Kanojia (@shalinikanojia)
Assistant Producer: Krishika Shirishkar (@_krishikaa27_)
Style Team: Kashish Jain, Bhairavi Ahuja, and Shivani Raiththa

On Aneet: Outfit, AFEW by Rahul Mishra (@afew.rahulmishra); 18kt gold with diamonds necklace, 18kt rose gold with diamonds and tourmaline ring, 18kt rose gold and gold cluster diamond rings, Tanishq Diamonds (@tanishqjewellery)