It’s 6 p.m. and Deepika Padukone is in bed. Perched against a mahogany headboard, she’s totally at ease, if not slightly groggy, having just woken from a nap. It’s a totally fitting place to find a new mom, seven months postpartum, eking out whatever time she can to rest as her baby sleeps.
Since bursting onto the scene nearly two decades ago—first in a Kannada-language film and then in Farah Khan’s opus Om Shanti Om—Padukone has always presented as the picture-perfect heroine, a megawatt Movie Star—one with 40-some film credits to her name, who regularly sits on “highest paid actress” lists in India; one-half of Bollywood’s It Couple (her husband is fellow actor Ranveer Singh); a fashion icon, opening the Sabyasachi runway, and holding coveted contracts with luxury brands like Cartier and Louis Vuitton; a social media juggernaut with more than 80 million followers. Someone who is the backbone (along with now-household onscreen names like Shah Rukh Khan, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and Priyanka Chopra Jonas) of a billion dollar Hindi film industry, and for bringing it, and in turn, South Asian culture, to the global stage (see her appearances at Cannes and Oscars and Met Galas, plural, as feathers in her cap).
