Katrina Kaif: I was on set with Venkatesh when someone said on the mic, ‘this girl can’t dance!’

Katrina Kaif on Mid-day`s Sit With Hitlist

Katrina Kaif was barely out of her teens when she moved to India to pursue a career in films. She had no prior connections to Bollywood, and learnt most of the craft on the job. The actress says she faced a lot of criticism on her face, which would often make her cry. But, she admits, the courage she had back then is something she won't be able to muster up now.

"It was difficult back then. If today someone asked me to do that, I mean no, impossible. That's why I was fine. I find it fascinating that after having seen so much, after having achieved everything I think in this zone that I set out to do - of course now I have new dreams and I have new goals - but when I came in, I had a certain vision. After having achieved all that, I have so much more fear and I think so much more now than when I came in. I guess it is that expression - you have nothing to lose. Because if I had to do it now, I'd be terrified," she elaborates on Mid-day's Sit With Hitlist episode.

Katrina also says that she did not take criticism to heart at that point, and had a healthy way of processing feedback.

"I think it was just naive and innocent. I remember there was an instance where I was on a south Indian film set with Venkatesh - this would have been Malliswari - and I was doing a song and somebody on the set was saying this on the mike - ‘this girl just can't dance!' I remember very specifically, but not feeling pained or sensitive about it, just hearing that as information. So, I guess the thing is that they didn't penetrate in a way that stopped me," she says.

"I have so many so many memories of people telling me to my face that you will not make it, you cannot succeed, this will not work, I will never take you in a film, we will not be able to work with you. All of this changed. The same the same people who said these things to me, I did work with all of them. I did do films with all of them. So, had I taken it to my heart and gotten dejected and gave up, none of this would have happened.

How did she react to criticism that is coming straight to her face? "I would sit there and I would cry. I really believed that I processed things in the most healthiest possible way. I just didn't take them to heart, I didn't take it negatively. ‘Okay, he is saying something, maybe I am not doing something right now, okay, let's just try a little harder, let's just work a little harder, become a little better, perfect your craft, be better at what you do, it will change'. I think I just went with my heart," she elaborates.