Friedo Pinto was presented the International Icon award at the recent edition of IIFA. PHOTO: FILE
Asked what the term “international icon” means to her and if she considers herself one, Pinto said, “I do consider myself an international icon. I travelled internationally for nine months post Slumdog Millionaire and got success at a very young age.” She added, “Also the terms like iconic have been bestowed on us by people like you (the media) and I feel very privileged and humbled about it. I do feel that I don’t like to rest on words such as celebrity, superstar and all of those because I don’t like to give importance to these. I do believe nothing is permanent in this life.”
In a short span of her career in the entertainment industry, Pinto has carved out a niche of her own in world cinema through roles in films such as Slumdog Millionaire, Miral, Day of the Falcon, Immortals, Desert Dancer and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. She has also done her bit for the society — be it aligning herself with social causes like the Girl Rising Campaign or getting together with female stars for a production house to solve the issue of gender disparity in Hollywood.
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Pinto will also be flying off to Monrovia this week to join the First Lady of the US, Michelle Obama, for Let Girls Learn — a government initiative aimed at helping girls obtain quality education. She will travel to Liberia, Morocco and Spain at the end of June and early July as part of the Let Girls Learn initiative. Speaking about the venture, she stated, “The platform I was given, there will be an opportunity to do things that I was already doing. And with this scale, people will take more notice and the cause will go to a wider scale. I feel it is very important that I actually got this opportunity because at the end of the day there has to be an extension of what I do. I am just fulfilling my responsibility.”
From where she got the idea about going on an international trip to help girls all around the world, Pinto mentioned, “Honestly, I worked for my campaign last year as well. From the last conversation came the world conversation about girls in India, America and many other parts of the world. And from there on came the idea of doing an international trip. I jumped on the opportunity as it’s great to represent and talk about it.” Pinto also feels that it is high time people realise that women are not just about clothes, shoes and bags. “Ask a woman more than clothes and manicure. I guess it’s more important,” she said.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 27th, 2016.
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