Preity Zinta says motherhood shaped her return in 'Batwara 1947'

Indian actor Preity Zinta has revealed that drawing on her own experiences as a wife and mother helped her bring emotional authenticity to her role in Batwara 1947, the film marking her return to Bollywood after an eight-year hiatus.

Speaking to Variety India, Zinta said her personal life allowed her to connect with the emotional core of the film, which explores the devastating human cost of the 1947 Partition and the pain of leaving behind loved ones, homes and everything familiar.

"For me, this was about the love of my family. The beauty of the script for me was that, however dark life could be, one ray of hope is enough to keep you going. This story is a story of hope," she said.

In a separate interview with Gulf News, Zinta said she never felt the need to rush back to acting and instead waited for a story that truly resonated with her.

"I didn’t miss it, to be honest. I don’t want to lie by saying I did. I was having a family. It was new to me. I was focusing on my personal life," she said. "However big my career milestones might be, my greatest milestone was to have children and a family."

The actor explained that becoming a mother gave her a deeper understanding of the women who endured the horrors of Partition.

She recalled director Rajkumar Santoshi encouraging her to focus solely on her character's family rather than the wider historical events unfolding around them.

"Rajkumar Santoshi came up to me and asked me to think only of what is happening within the family and nothing beyond it. If I hadn’t been a mother or been married, I wouldn’t have understood this suggestion. I understood what it meant because I have my family, even when we were shooting the train sequence," she told Variety.

While her co-star Sunny Deol had previously portrayed the Partition era in Gadar, Zinta said the experience was entirely new for her. "But for me, it was painful when I did the scene. You won’t feel it if you are not into it," she said.

Recalling one particularly emotional sequence, the actor said she imagined herself in her character's position with her own children.

"Rajkumar Santoshi asked them to move around. I was thinking to myself, I have little kids. When I run out of diapers, I freak out. So what were the mothers doing at that point? Women and children experience the worst. So my character’s whole worldview was her family," she said.

Zinta also said she had long wanted to star in a period film and was excited to finally explore a different era on screen. "I was dying to do a period film. I always romanticised what that era would've been like—the clothes, the food. You're always curious," she told Gulf News.

Batwara 1947, starring Deol, Zinta and Aamir Khan, is set against the backdrop of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent and is scheduled for a theatrical release on August 14.