Aneet Padda (23)
Actor
As a child, Aneet Padda was so lost in her own world that her mother took her to a doctor. Teachers at school wondered why she seemed to drift off in class. But Padda’s questions weren’t about confusion—they were philosophical: “What is a week? And why do we put seven days in it?” She would wake her mother up at odd hours, asking how many stars there were in the universe.
Today, that dreamy child is one of Bollywood’s most promising actors, with her breakthrough performance in Saiyaara earning her widespread acclaim.
Saiyaara has given Padda visibility, opportunities and attention, but its deepest impact, she believes, was internal. “Before, I would close my eyes and dream things up, hoping they would happen. Now everything feels possible.” More than that, the experience grounded her. “I connected with myself after a long time.”
For the 23-year-old, this training started in childhood. Padda’s mother, who worried that she tended to withdraw, pushed her towards expressing herself—speech competitions, poetry readings, small moments on stage. One such competition became formative. Instead of teaching her how to perform a patriotic poem, her mother explained its meaning and asked her to say it the way she felt it. Padda won the first prize. She recalls this now as her first acting lesson: Emotion before technique.
Her father, who had once dreamt of a career in acting, influenced her quietly but deeply. When Padda told him she wanted to act, he was worried about the uncertainty of the profession, but did not hold her back. Later, when she signed with Yash Raj Films, he stood there in stunned silence. “I’d never seen my dad like that. That’s when I realised—even he is just a kid who had a dream,” recalls the actor, who previously appeared in the coming-of-age series Big Girls Don’t Cry.
Unlike many of her peers, Padda has never received any formal acting training. She prepared by standing in front of mirrors, recording herself, and writing out lines to practise emotions. In earlier supporting roles, she was making it up as she went along. “I was so stressed about getting it right that I wasn’t enjoying it,” she admits.
That changed with Saiyaara. The set became a place to explore rather than control. “I realised art is subjective,” she says. “There is no right or wrong.” After preparation—reading the script, taking the notes—she learnt to let go. On set, she stopped overthinking and simply “lived in the moment”.
Director Mohit Suri instinctively picked up on this while casting for Saiyaara. “Aneet’s audition was like a breath of fresh air,” he recounts. “The language of her pausing, her speaking, the way she looked, the way she thought, was so today.” For Padda, Suri was like a parent holding the cycle from behind while the child paddled, until a moment on set when she took charge of a difficult scene the way he hadn’t expected. “That’s when I realised,” he says, “this girl doesn’t need me to hold the cycle in the back.”
Despite the overwhelming audience response—often leaving her in tears—Padda stays grounded. She is pursuing her studies at Delhi University, alongside shooting, and carries books to sets. Education, she says, is non-negotiable. “I want deeper knowledge.”
When not on set—or not studying—Padda sings, plays the guitar, writes short stories and spends time on YouTube learning about sound production and how music is being made. To her, creativity is not about fame, but about comfort. “I go to my craft to escape the noise,” she says, unbothered by what others expect.
As Padda prepares for her next film, Shaktishalini, Suri believes the audiences have only seen a small part of what she can do. “I don’t think I’ve even scratched the surface with Aneet,” he says. “She’s funny, she can dance, she has many sides my film didn’t need. People know her as a dramatic actor, but there’s so much more left in her.”
But Padda has different measures of success. “I want to be remembered as someone who was honest, and who was okay being human.”
First Published: Jan 07, 2026, 14:19
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