By Karl Quinn
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Sunny Leone’s credits as an actress run to more than 100 titles. But it’s the most recent one that fills her with pride, because it signals the moment she finally gained some acceptance as a serious performer rather than her standing as India’s most famous former porn star.
“There’s two sides to it in my head,” says Leone, who is in Melbourne for the premiere on Sunday night of Kennedy, a dark action thriller about police and political corruption in Mumbai. “One is the film, which is something I’m really proud to be a part of. The other is the journey.”
Canadian-born Leone, who is 42 and married with three children, is more than a decade into a post-porn career as a mainstream actor, presenter and entrepreneur with interests in perfume, cosmetics, clothing and cryptocurrency. But her past has inevitably followed her, and still ensures there are some filmmakers in Bollywood who will refuse to work with her on morality grounds.
So, when she was invited to the world’s most famous film festival for the premiere of Kennedy in May, it felt like the vindication she’d long been seeking.
“If you told me 11 years ago that Sunny Leone from adult films would be on the red carpet at Cannes with a film, I would have said you were crazy,” she says. “I went through a lot, fighting political groups, governments, fanatic groups, people with their own views of who I am, and media outlets writing so many crazy things about me. So it was pretty amazing. They couldn’t take that away.”
Leone – whose birth name is Karenjit Kaur Vohra – was born into a Sikh family in the small city of Sarnia, Ontario. She always dreamt of acting in the more traditional sense, but her early encounters in the industry were enough to send her down a different path.
“When I was 18 or 19 years old I would go to auditions or do these photo shoots and I found that world a little dark,” she says, referring to the ostensibly ‘legitimate’ non-porn industry.
“And then everything switched gears to adult, which was not dark, it was very happy. Everything’s out in the open, it’s not some hidden secret of what people are expecting of you.”
Whatever the relative merits and drawbacks of the respective arms of the filmed entertainment business, there’s no doubt the adult side still carries a certain stigma, particularly with the more conservative segments of Indian society.
For Leone, the chance to shake herself free of that – to a degree at least – came when she was invited to appear as a contestant on the reality show Bigg Boss (an Indian version of Big Brother) in 2011.
“My thinking, when I was offered that show, was, ‘If I step one foot in this house, then mission accomplished’. Because that had never happened before, someone from the adult industry on national television, on a prime-time show that everybody watches,” she says.
Sunny Leone in a scene from Anurag Kashyap’s fiilm Kennedy.
“I thought, ‘If I go home tomorrow, I’m OK with it because I’ve basically set up the next round of what my life would be because of this show’. And now it’s been 11 years and I’ve never left India.”
She became a fan favourite during her seven weeks on the show, and was offered her first Bollywood role, in a film called Jism 2 (‘jism’ is Hindi for ‘body’) while she was in the house. Since then, the roles have come thick and fast (she’s also a host of the MTV India dating show Splitsvilla), though none of the work to date has had the gravitas of Kennedy.
If she’s finally arrived at a different place, Leone thinks her adopted country is heading there too.
“I think India is coming into the zone that they’ve always wanted to be in, which is being able to express themselves, whether it’s sexually, whether it’s the content that’s being talked about, which also can be sexual,” she says.
Still, she can’t help feeling there’s a double standard applied to her. “If I do a kissing scene, I get articles written about me that are not so positive. But if somebody else does the same thing or more, it’s considered bold, and how brave she is. It’s really quite interesting.”
Bollywood producer Mahesh Bhatt visits the set of Bigg Boss in 2011 to offer Sunny Leone a part in the movie Jism 2.Credit: Intenet
Given that, Leone has no regrets about the path she took, even if that was the one that led her to stardom.
“I think everything happens for a reason, and destiny has his own – or her own – plan,” she says. “Everything that happened brought me to the moment of going on the show, and that changed my entire life, so I’m not ashamed, I don’t feel bad, I’m extremely happy about my journey.
“Sometimes things become very difficult because of my life choices. But I’m sitting in Melbourne, my film is playing at a film festival. From where I started to where I am today, you can’t predict that. It’s been pretty amazing.”
Kennedy will close the Indian Film Festival of Melbourne with two screenings at Hoyts Docklands on Sunday. Details: iffm.com.au
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