Parineeti Chopra on The Girl on the Train: Film has taken me to hell and back

Parineeti Chopra says she revisited painful memories from her past for her role as an alcoholic in The Girl on the Train.

Charming as she is in happy-go-lucky roles, Parineeti Chopra has, on countless occasions, expressed the desire to break her bubbly image. The actor has put her money where her mouth is — if the trailer of The Girl on the Train is any indication, she has delivered a gritty performance as an alcoholic who inadvertently gets involved in a missing person case. But for her, the journey of transforming into Mira in front of the camera was far from easy.

“I have tapped into my innermost traumatic memories to bring this character to life. I don’t remember how many times I broke down on the set because I was revisiting memories that I had buried deep in my mind and heart,” says Chopra, who fronts the Hindi adaptation of Paula Hawkins’s 2015 bestseller of the same name. The Netflix film also features Kirti Kulhari, Aditi Rao Hydari and Avinash Tiwary.

A still from The Girl on the Train 

Confronting the ghosts of one’s past can be as troubling as it is necessary. The actor reveals that as soon as she read the script of the Ribhu Dasgupta-directed psychological thriller, she understood it was one of those rare films that would take an emotional toll on her. Refusing to divulge details of the dark chapters of her life, she says, “I never wanted to face those incidents again. [But] I realised that to be able to pull off this character, I will have to dig deep into my past and confront the pain [I endured] in my personal life. This film has taken me to hell and back because it constantly kept me on the edge. It wasn’t easy [to be in this state] before every shot.” 

In 2016, the novel was adapted into a Hollywood offering, featuring Emily Blunt. 

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