Anushka Sharma: The World’s Hottest Sharma

You know there is something special about an actress when she makes you sit up and pay attention to even a sanitary napkin ad. Anushka Sharma has precisely that gift. She also possesses another coveted skill – this one involves her emerging out of water bodies in a bikini – a skill she flaunts with as much flair and oomph as Ursula Andress in Dr. No (minus the knife). “I worked out a lot to get that body (For Ladies Vs Ricky Bahl), so if people liked it then it’s a great compliment,” she laughs. Before that movie, Miss Sharma had even more famously emerged out of the sea in Badmaash Company wearing a bright yellow bikini, hot pants and sporting wet hair.

“In Ladies Vs Ricky Behl, the role is that of a girl who is trying to seduce a man – it’s not a bikini shot for me. Anyway, it’s only here that it’s a big deal. What else is someone going to wear on the side of a pool if not a bikini?” she shoots back.

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We agree and mumble something to that effect, but by then she has already moved on to talking about her recent vacation (you find yourself doing this quite often with Anushka – trying to keep up). “You know no one looks at you on a beach in Italy?” She is of course fibbing. She has just returned from a vacation in Italy where she was hit on by a middle-aged waiter. “I don’t really know what ‘hit-on’ means, but Italian men are very, umm, expressive,” she says with a throaty laugh. Expressive is of course actress-speak for randy.

Compared to us blokes who don’t go up to a girl and start handing out compliments like Domino’s flyers or resort to drooling on her hand, the Italians do just that and they’ve made it into an art – a quality Miss Sharma seems to be bafflingly appreciative of. “If they (the Italians) think you are sexy, they will walk up to you and say that without making you feel uncomfortable. Unlike India where a guy even telling a girl she is beautiful is offensive.” It’s a cultural thing she tells us, just like bikinis on a beach. So, wait – we should hit on women more often then?

Miss Sharma would have you believe it’s perfectly okay for men to walk up to women and tell them how attractive they are even in India. “Just don’t be creepy or lecherous,” she claims.

“Italians are like this all the time and all the other women who have gone there have told me the same,” she says. So the Italians hit on everything that moves? All women? “I mean everyone they find attractive,” she smiles.

So who stares more? Indian men or the Italians? “Indians no doubt. They stare too much, maybe it’s because Indian women don’t wear bikinis.” Her knowledge though is a bit second hand about this – Miss Sharma admits she hasn’t been to an Indian beach sunbathing – she gets mobbed enough anyway.

In true cinema fashion though, she is insistent she does not look at herself as sexy. “Even when I was voted number 4 in the FHM 100 Sexiest List, I didn’t see myself as sexy.” Anushka Sharma was one of the surprising changes in the FHM 100 Sexiest List 2012 – she jumped 6 places from the 2011 list. But whether she likes it or not, her two bikini scenes are as much to be credited for her 6-position jump as her acting skills. They have also given her a rather uncanny privilege – she is the only one of our top 5 - Katrina, Kareena, Deepika and Vidya who have made it to the raging ‘Sex Symbol’ club without the mandatory item song. “I am not uncomfortable doing anything as long as it does not look vulgar.” Anushka Sharma is very much the epitome of the new Indian girl, the bikini bombshell on the beach who also rocks a salwar kameez at the Diwali puja. She is also the sort who would chase eve-teasers and fling stones at them with the precision of Yuvraj Singh.

And in case you didn’t know this already, she also likes to talk. And when she does she speaks her mind. “The problem in India is that we don’t encourage independent thinking – whether it comes to clothes or thinking or anything else.” So what does she think about the freshly re-brewed Anna Hazare agitation? “I don’t understand why we have to wait for one person to do something and then follow him. You have no right to question the government you have elected.” She thinks we lack character to do anything other than pointing fingers. And she might be right too.

“The press in India needs to get cooler in their head. I think journalists are more interested in link-up rumours than anyone or anything else,” she snaps when we broach the news of a ‘double movie date’ between her and Ranveer Singh (a gent she has been linked up with several times ever since their movie Band Baaja Baaraat) and another couple. “It’s stupid.” “If I had to do anything with a boy I would have done it at home. Why would I go to a public cinema hall?” Her logic seems to hold water, but her and Ranveer’s alleged affair is something that cinema hacks talk about in not too hushed voices, “But I am single,” “Definitely single,” she says in mock anger.

At a time when her contemporaries are written about in gossip hags gunning for each other movies and lives, Anushka Sharma is content with sharing stage with other actresses and yet not resort to bitching about them. Next she appears in a movie with Katrina Kaif, who she shares a great vibe with, but even then insists, “It’s not possible to be friends with an actress.” Anushka is full of such small contradictions – she doesn’t like cooking, but she still loves state-of-the-art kitchens. She isn’t a girlie girl, yet she’s effortlessly feminine. You would also be better advised not to expect cooked meals on a date with her. “I can’t do the whole cooking a romantic meal deal – I’d rather just order in and watch a DVD.”

We want to soldier on, but since this really isn’t Stardust, we decide to ask her some hard-hitting questions – like the kind of music she is into. She’s just developed a newfound love for electronic music (she attended a music fest in Europe last month and has pledged to attend at least one every year from now one) sans the mosh-pits, she can’t sleep without watching the telly for a while, she loves board games and sadly, she reads sparingly.

And at the end of the day, she is the kind of girl who’d make you realise how flawed a movie like Cocktail is. Because she is the girl you’d take home despite the fact that she wears a bikini.

From the August 2012 issue of FHM India.