Penthouse actress Gayathiri Iyer: Casting directors have their own groups

She was very studious in school and college and was absolutely not interested in anything to do with the film industry In fact she used to look down upon anything which was not related to academics She was trained in classical music and classical dance at an early age and was part of the singing and dancing team for school events as well As a career actress Gayathiri Iyer was always inclined towards engineering But as destiny would have it she has now made a name for herself in the showbiz industryAfter making a mark in Sandalwood Gayathiri has been part of mainstream Hindi films namely Ajay Devgnstarrer Raid Vikram Bhatts Ghost and the series Haiwaan Well now she is all set for her fourth Hindi outing AbbasMustans next OTT film Penthouse which stars Arjun Rampal and Bobby DeolAs she is all excited for her next big Netflix original we got Gayathiri chatty in this tellall interview Excerpts belowIt all began in collegeI was in my first year of college when we had these intercollege fashion shows and my thenboyfriend literally forced me to walk the ramp even though I was least interested But that one ramp show changed my life A model who was a coordinator saw me on the ramp during that show and he offered me several ads after that I got my first film also because of thatHer first filmI remember myself being quite stupid when my first film offer came before I decided to act When one of the very good directors in Tamil offered me a Tamil movie at that time I didnt take it up I was approached for a second lead actress part which was opposite one of the very popular actors But instead I asked him Please make me sing in your movie and he was like This girl is so mad He kept asking me quite a few times and even tried to convince my mom and dad to make me act in his film But my parents left it up to me as I was adamant I was like No way I want to sing I dont want to act Eventually the director just gave up on me He obviously was not looking for a singer he was looking for an actress and he just thought that Im a hopeless case and he just left it So I remember I was that stupid But when I finally did my first film as an actress I realised how addictive acting was for me and how I could do it for even 36 hours at a stretch without feeling tired or bored That sealed it for me and I was like I cant do anything else when I know how acting in front of the camera feels Every day I try to better myself and see great actors perform and try to learn a bit every day from the screen and from real people around me tooHer Bollywood journeyRaid starring Ajay Devgn and Saurabh Shukla was one of the first Bollywood films for which I had auditioned for Getting a chance to audition for good Hindi films is not easy because most casting directors have their own groups from which they audition and cast But luckily for me the casting for Raid was being done by Shivam from Casting Bay I didnt know them before and it was my first time meeting or auditioning for them So you see they didnt push their own set of favourites At that time I didnt know that I was auditioning for an Ajay Devgan film or a TSeries movie All I knew that it was for a Raj Kumar Gupta directorial and so I was very thrilled A week before the shoot I came to know about the cast and more details of the projectHer tale of struggleEvery day is a struggle in Bollywood I am sure everyone has gone through their own struggle be it small or big Even I went through a difficult phase when I decided to take up acting as a profession I come from a very conservative family where acting and overall the showbiz industry is looked down upon So when I took the decision to get into the acting field fullfledged my family expressed their displeasure For around four to five months my entire family Mom dad and my brother were not speaking to me at all I was staying all alone in Bangalore at that time doing a bit of modelling and acting and for five whole months I didnt get to speak to my family And finally on my birthday I got a call from my mum It was June so it was from around January they hadnt been speaking to me And on June 16 my mom called and you know she just broke down and even I started crying That was my share of struggle on the personal front But I still feel guilty for putting my family through so much for my passion for the sake of my career Its something that I still havent been able to forgive myself for I think that will always remain in my mindWorking with AbbasMustan for PenthouseI feel it was a huge blessing for me to do an AbbasMustan film and that too a Netflix original at this stage in my career because I am just threefilmsold in Hindi My first film was Raid with Raj Kumar Gupta the second film was Ghost with Vikram Bhatt and then I did the TV show Haiwaan with Balaji And now I have Penthouse with AbbasMustan I think Ive been pretty lucky that Ive worked with all known directors really renowned names in Bollywood So getting my fourth project with this famous director duo was in itself a blessing I was super nervous when I reached the set on the first day But AbbasMustan are the most down to earth directors I have had ever worked with be it in South or Bollywood One thing that really struck me about them was after every pack up they would get up from the monitor walk all the way to where we actors are and say thank you to all of us They are that humble Quite unlike their films AbbasMustan are the calmest and the humblest directors I have ever seen