Actor or activist. Ask Samyukta Hornad what she prefers to be addressed as and she says, “I am still trying to discover myself.” Steel flyover beda, save Cubbon Park, animal rights... This 28-year-old has been a constant and prominent face at protests related to all these causes. It comes as no surprise then that Hornad will soon be seen playing an environmentalist in an upcoming film. “When the character was written, everyone unanimously came up with my name,” she says.
Calling herself ‘destiny’s child’, Hornad was discovered by director Pawan Kumar, who featured her in his first directional movie Lifeu Ishtene, opposite Diganth. “Pawan Kumar saw me crossing the road with my hair wild open. According to him, I looked happy and full of life. That’s when he got in touch with me to cast me for the role,” says Hornad, who was just 17 when she did her first movie. And though she was into theatre, working in movies was a whole new ball game for her. “In theatre, everything is loud and expressive. But in movies, there are a lot of subtleties that have to be taken care of. For example, it took a lot of practice to not sing the song while shooting it.”
But besides her acting skills, Hornad is also at the receiving end of many compliments related to her naturally-permed hair. “Earlier I used to experiment with straightening my hair but it used to harm it,” she says, crediting her good genes for her luscious tresses. “My mother has thick hair and my father has curly hair. I guess I got the best of both worlds,” she laughs, before she advises people to stay away from chemical-heavy products. Back from her break, the year looks quite busy with four projects in the pipeline for Hornad: Mysore Masala: The UFO Incident (Kannada), Arishadvarga (Kannada), Red Rum (Tamil) and Nanu mattu Gunda (Kannada). “It feels good to be back on screen.”
A filmy connection
One would think home discussions are filled with movie talk, especially considering how actors like Bhargavi Narayan is her grandmother, Prakash Belawadi her uncle and Sudha Belawadi her mother. But her upbringing was strict. “When I was young, there was a curfew on me watching TV, because my mother didn’t want me to grow up watching soap operas. Maybe that’s why when I joined theatre, I had my own style of acting rather than being inspired by any other,” says Hornad, who today has 13 movies to her credit.