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Film festival gazes upon a Shining Star from India

WAILEA -- As a clip reel of memorable scenes from Maui Film Festival Shining Star Freida Pinto's career rolled on the Celestial Cinema screen Thursday evening, the actress herself couldn't watch.

"It's hard," the Indian beauty said with a laugh during the tribute interview that followed. "It's hard making someone watch themselves on a big screen like this in front of you lovely people."

Making her first visit to Maui to accept the award, Pinto was already taken with the island.

"Every place I go to, it's the first people you meet who make it for you, the people who greet you at the airport or the hotel, or in this case the people at the film festival. Everyone's just been so kind. And welcoming. And so relaxed, actually, which is just something you don't usually see at a film festival.

"After that, everything you have here is just sort of paradise," said the 32-year-old native of Mumbai. "I kind of want to move here."

The clip reel ended with "Slumdog Millionaire," the Best Picture Oscar winner that not only brought contemporary India to global audiences, but literally launched Pinto's career.

"That was my first film ever."

Director Danny Boyle spent six months casting the part of Latika, reading over 3,000 young women for the part.

"He wanted to give everybody a fair chance. By the fourth or fifth month of the process, I became so obsessed with the character, I thought, this is me. Latika is me, and I have to find some way to play her. I am so grateful that he gave me this chance, someone not trained, someone who had never been to film school. All I had was plain passion, and I'm so glad he spotted it."

That passion began "ever since I knew what film was," she said, "ever since I could be drawn into the fantasy of escaping into the cinematic world. When I was really young, I would stand in front of the mirror and imitate some of the actors from India that I would see in film and television. I would dance. I was always a very dramatic child. My parents used to say if I became a doctor, they would be really worried, because they knew my passion lay somewhere else.

Seeing Charlize Theron's Oscar-winning portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in "Monster" when Pinto was 18 was a turning point.

"That was the first time I realized acting can be very transformative, where you completely surrender yourself, and breathe life into these new characters, whose lives are sometimes so far removed from your own," she said. "You have to step into these people's shoes, and sometimes their shoes are not so pretty. They're uncomfortable. I realized if I ever did this for a living, I would want to work with people who would let me transform myself with every character I played."

Considering all the awards it would go on to win, including a best actress nomination for Pinto from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, "Slumdog Millionaire" was also on-the-job training.

"Before I got onto this job, I didn't even understand the word, 'speed.' When they say, 'camera . . . speed . . . rolling . . .,' I would hear the word 'speed' and say, 'What does that mean? Do I run?' So it was a very daunting process. It was about absorbing whatever I could, learning on the job. Then after it came out, the process of promoting it was like an 'Alice in Wonderland' situation. I had no idea of what was happening, these cameras and being dressed up and walking red carpets. It was definitely not as relaxed as over here."

She was a quick study.

"One of the things I realized was, when you're given an opportunity like this, you're given it for a reason. And if you let it slip by, it may never come back. It's a very fickle industry. You get discovered, then you can go from hero to zero in seconds. So I realized I needed to surround myself with the right group of people who would guide me and send me down the right path.

"'Slumdog' really did open doors, and opportunities did come my way. But I was careful about not being stereotyped or typecast, because that's really common for an ethnic minority actor from my part of the world."

Avoiding the one-dimensional roles of terrorist, nurse or the doctor, she said, "I was really careful that I did not want to fall into that trap. We tried to stay away from the big-budget films and just do meaningful indie cinema."

That path led to her role as a Palestinian girl drawn into the Arab-Israeli conflict in "Miral," but also made room to play goddess Phaedra in "The Immortals" and to be directed by Woody Allen in "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger."

Pinto is currently co-starring with Idris Elba in "Guerrilla," a six-part Showtime series focusing on a politically active couple who set out to change the world in 1970s London, a role that allows her to explore the challenge of trying to take moral political stances in a world of endless complexity.

"I asked people, 'Why is it OK to see men playing morally conflicted characters in lead roles, but not women? Why can't women be complex and morally conflicted and accepted at the same time?'" The series is set against Britain's immigration law of that era -- and she noted the issue of immigration is still politically charged, from the last U.S. election to the Brexit vote.

"It's really about consequences. No matter what situation you're in, no matter what pressure you're under -- and this is for everyone, humanity in general -- there are consequences to decisions you make. I think there has been an evolution, to even realize we do need to talk about this. And this is a TV show. If people can't digest a TV show, how are we going to digest reality? The way I look at the world without being a cynic is there's good and bad that exist at the same time. It's about trying to balance it."

At the other end of the cinema spectrum, she has done big-budget special effects projects, from "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" to director Andy Serkis' upcoming version of "The Jungle Book," which included "going out in the wild with big animals."

"It's interesting," she said of green-screen filmmaking. "You're talking to a disco ball, or a tennis ball, depending. With 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes,' we had this big silver ball, and I had to pet it and take it for a walk. Sometimes it was nothing, air. But, when you see the end result, and see how people love the end result, you realize at the end of the day, it's all about imagination and letting your imagination go wild."

Offscreen, Pinto has worked with various causes, especially the organization Girl Effect.

"That work for me is hardly work. It's almost like a responsibility. I'm in a position where I've been given a platform where people listen to me and value the words that come out of my mouth, so why don't I get educated about things that are pressing in our world?

"The thing that I'm very focused on is girls' education, especially the marginalized parts of the world, the developing world. Whether it's wars, natural calamities, whether it's any kind of economic depression, it's always women and young adolescent girls who are the first to be marginalized, to be taken out of school, or not even see school to begin with. So one of the things that's important to me is to work with organizations and groups that make people aware of how we can help."

Pausing, she added: "We are all in a kind of position of privilege, and it would be almost wrong not to use a little bit of that to help someone else. It's really selfish -- I may think I'm helping them, but it's really the other way around. In Ethiopia, someone asked how I inspire these girls. I said, 'I leave a trip being inspired by them.' They have so little, and yet they make the most of it, and they are so grateful for whatever comes their way. Really they're the ones who inspire me. Their passion and drive inspire me to keep doing what I'm doing."

Today, following a full roster of filmmaker panels and the Taste of Wailea, the Maui Film Festival will bestow its Shining Star award on Karen Gillan at the Celestial Cinema. Screenings continue through Sunday in Wailea and at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center. For more information, visit www.mauifilmfestival.com.

* Contact Rick Chatenever at rickchatenever@gmail.com.