Sonia: Happy Days here again - TeluguPeople.com News

Hyderabad: She thinks acting is her hidden talent. 'If someone had said to me that I could act, I would have probably just laughed at them,' exclaims Sonia. But that was before Happy Days happened. 'It was only post Happy Days did I realise it; okay, I am an actor,' she confesses.

Back then she was looking at acting as something she would do while on a sabbatical. 'I was working as a quality manager in a corporate company and was planning on taking a three-month break from my work,' she says. But then she was spotted and was offered a role in Sekhar Kammula's Happy Days.

'I thought it would look good on my resume to say that I acted in a film during my sabbatical. I am someone who likes to keep trying new things and thought I must give it a shot and jumped on board,' says Sonia, explaining how her tryst with showbiz began.

The film released and became a huge hit but she went back to her corporate job. 'Acting was just an accident and then I was not really looking at acting as a career option,' she shares.

But then offers kept knocking on her door and she signed up to play the lead in Vinayakudu. 'This film, too, was a huge hit and that's when I realised that perhaps I had what it takes to be a mainstream actress. I decided to give acting a good shot and quit my job to pursue acting full time.

It's a lot of fun being an actor. No two work days are the same here and there is so much happening all the time on the sets that it can never get boring,' she says excitedly.

But then things started taking a turn for the worse. 'To be honest I did not know how things worked in the industry. Some projects I chose never materialised or got canned midway. I lost out on some projects as I was replaced by someone else, it was like a jinx,' she says.

That she also happened to put on a lot of weight did not help matters either. 'It was becoming a torture to get into trial rooms to realise that you don't fit into anything that you like. I decided I had to get back into shape first,' she explains.

After a brief hiatus things are looking up once again. 'I have signed up a film opposite Jagapathy Babu. I play a journalist in the yet-to-be-titled film. The offers have started coming again and I will make some announcements soon,' she adds with a smile.

Director Krishna Vamsi thinks that she has what it takes to be a Bipasha Basu equivalent in Tollywood, what with the curly hair and dusky complexion to boot. 'I am someone who believes that if it's not gorgeous then do not show it.

I wasn't very sure of my body and also having tasted critical acclaim very early in my career, I was perhaps only getting performance-oriented roles,' she says talking about her image.

But the actress seems to have realised that this is showbiz after all. 'I am the only girl in a family of boys. So I have been a tomboy all my life. I still jump gates and climb trees. I first applied makeup when I began working.

Also, I was a little too shy and was uncomfortable about showing off my body. But I have figured out that in showbiz, all this needs to be done and there has been a definite shift in my outlook,' she adds.