SHE was 18 when she played the leggy temptress in Ram Gopal Varma’s Nishabd, twisting Amitabh Bachchan’s 60-year-old Vijay around her little finger. Then for two years, we heard next to nothing about this young actress from London who trained at the Lee Strasberg Institute, save for rare appearances at parties or events and a brand endorsement. "I wanted to stay out of the public eye and I was waiting for Ghajini to roll out," Jiah explains, seemingly ready to clear the air before the release of Aamir Khan’s big 2008 film, in which she plays a brief role. "But I’ve no statements to make to shock you," she continues. "In fact nothing controversial is going to come out of my mouth." What happened to the girl who spoke her mind, I wonder aloud. The girl who changed her name from Nafisa to Jiah (inspired by Angelina Jolie’s Gia), because it sounded "sexier and international"? Who voiced her bitterness over her troubled childhood and the absence of her father (she’d revealed he had deserted the family when she was very young)? "Well in the last couple of years, I’ve learned, been trained, to be non-controversial," she chuckles, clearly ready to move on.
You come across as very confident… but had once attributed it to being a good actress.
It’s strange because as a teenager, I was such an introvert.
I still am in a way. Actually, I’m very nervous inside. Even during interviews, I rush questions, give two-second answers.
Yet you strode into Ram Gopal Varma’s office to bag the Nishabd role?
All I did was wear shorts, not ‘hot pants’ as the media suggested, when I went to meet him. I wanted to look cool and young. But I was very apprehensive.
On hindsight, was Nishabd the best debut an actress could hope for, or did it work against you? A lot of critics savaged your role as young seductress…
When you have Ram Gopal Varma and Amitabh Bachchan in your first film, it’s the best debut you can get. But the subject was tricky. Of course,now filmmakers want to venture out, do something different.
Yet your role in your second film, Ghajini, is very conventional.
Strangely, I have performed harder for this role. It was much more difficult…Aamir is a perfectionist, in a good way . I am young, just 21, not 30 plus, and I wanted to do something different, not sexy at all. So I’m playing an inquisitive medical student.
Now you’ll ask me ‘what’s wrong with being sexy?’ Well, I think I’m completely misunderstood.
People still believe I’m a man-eating Lolita.
I want to break that image.
Ghajini is a huge film, and I’m taking the right step.
Getting back to Aamir, how different is he from Amitabh as a co-star?
Well, with Amitabh Bachchan, he’s acted for so long that it just flows. But Aamir works hard on every detail… he was really patient with me all through filming. I’ve known him for a long time,and he still treats me as a kid. But on the set, I was just a professional actor.
Also,Ghajini is more performance- oriented, more dramatic, and tiring…it’s a thriller too, with a lot of physical acting.
You and PETA,how did that happen?
I like to do a lot of research for my roles, so I’d asked Ram Gopal Varma to give me some pointers. He said I should observe a cat, how it sits, watches at you. I went out and got a cat and did just that. By the time the film had released, I had four cats! Now I have a dog too.
I love animals and wanted to do something for them. So helping PETA is something I enjoy , and I’m open about saying I eat meat…I’m Muslim, after all, and love my biriyani.
The rumours that Tahir Hussain (Aamir Khan’s father) is your father… have they been put to rest?
That’s been forgotten a long time ago. It was so weird for me then since I’ve known him as a child and I couldn’t look at him the same way . We’ve since dealt with it. It helps not to be bothered.
They say you are a ‘reformed wild child’ now.
I’m no wild child. In the beginning, I thought the tag was so cool, but now I’m only hurt when I hear myself being described that way. I want to be taken more seriously as an actress. Perhaps the rebel, wild child image is courtesy my clothes during the Nishabd days. And earlier, I used to say whatever came into my head, good or bad. Now I feel sometimes a woman should just keep quiet and listen…you learn so much that way .
And then there’s your recent hot shoot for Maxim…
I have nothing to say to that. I was a geek in school, very unpopular, so this idea of being a male fantasy is strange.
After Ghajni, what ?
I will chart my game plan only after Ghajni’s release. For now, there’s Ken Ghosh’s film with Shahid and Sajid Khan’s Housefull, starring Akshay Kumar. Sajid seem to believe that I’ll be good with comedy.
In the last two years …
I’m at home most of the time, reading, painting or composing music - I’m trained in opera and play the piano. The only Indian composer on my iPod is A R Rahman, the rest is a mix of P Diddy, Mozart and other Western instrumentalists. I’m hooked on to Astrology books now and believe that global warming is not something we have created…seriously, I think it’s part of a cycle.