She didn't know a word of Hindi. She's not the critics' favourite. She doesn't come from a film family. And yet, she's at the top. How did Katrina Kaif pull that off? Sunday MiD DAY gets answers

Going back to when she was a model is all a bit hazy for Katrina Kaif, but this memory is still raw. She was 19; just out of the cobwebs of her disastrous debut Boom and acting in Telugu film Allari Pidugu with N T Rama Rao's son Balakrishna, a sweet 45-year-old co-star "who got on better with my mother" because Katrina and he were in different age brackets.

"It was an unbelievably low time. I didn't sleep for six days straight because I was so unhappy, I didn't want to wake up to my life. Allari Pidugu's director Jayant (Paranjee) and his wife never asked me what was up, but they gave me support. To cheer me up, Jayant included a line in one song, 'You're like the sunshine'," Katrina says, her eyes crinkling up in a smile, still touched by the little act of kindness. It was a line in English, a familiar language for a 19-year-old struggling in an alien tongue.

'YOUNG, BUBBLY AND VERY LUCKY'
Katrina claims that that girl and she are two different people today. That's easy to digest. Last totaled, Katrina has had seven hits since 2007 and one flop in Yuvvraaj. This, without doing a film with Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan or Hrithik Roshan, unlike other top heroines Kareena Kapoor, Priyanka Chopra and Aishwarya Rai.

"She's young, bubbly and very lucky. That's a deadly combination," points out trade analyst Amod Mehra, "The Hindi film industry is a superstitious one so the buzz is that Blue took such a huge opening because of her five-minute role in it. Katrina shares Kareena's place for the top slot today." Says the owner of the Bandra multiplex Gaiety-Galaxy, Manoj Desai, "The masses love to see her with Akshay Kumar. They don't care about her Hindi; after all, people accept Sonia Gandhi speaking in Hindi. She looks innocent to them, even when she's holding up money and saying, 'Paisa, paisa, paisa' in that De Dhana Dhan song."

Ironically, most film critics believe that Katrina struggles to emote. "I don't like what your reviews say about me," she says casually at the opening of this interview, "but I don't take reviews personally. It's part of the game."