Mumbai: Actress Saiyami Kher has started taking Punjabi lessons, and she believes that learning the language will be a plus point for her acting career.
The actress, who made her Bollywood debut in Rakeysh Om Prakash Mehra’s film Mirzya last year, has hired a teacher who trains her daily for an hour for the same.
“I’ve grown up speaking English, Hindi and Marathi and also studied German for almost 10 years. I picked up Telugu with my experience in the south.
Shabana (Azmi) masi felt I needed to have an Urdu background for films so I was really fortunate to have studied Urdu with her mother Shaukat Kaifi,” Saiyami said in a statement.
She added: “We’d sit and read extracts of her books or Kaifi Azmi’s writings. Recently, I was approached to play a Punjabi girl in a film and learnt a few lines.
I got the lines without any trouble at all! I feel that learning a language like Punjabi will always help with my acting especially while talking in different dialects.”
The actress received the Best Debut Award at the Dadasaheb Phalke Excellence Awards 2017 earlier this month.
After receiving the award the, she said: “Dadasaheb Phalke belonged to my hometown, Nashik. I’ve grown up knowing what immense contribution he has had to Indian cinema. It’s such an honour to have received an award from the Dadasaheb Phalke foundation.”
IANS