Enchanting Shilpa Shetty

Shilpa Shetty's glam photo shoot for asiaSpa. Photos by: Vikram Bawa

Shilpa Shetty's glam photo shoot for asiaSpa.

Shilpa Shetty's glam photo shoot for asiaSpa.

Shilpa Shetty's glam photo shoot for asiaSpa.

A 17-year-old Shilpa was first seen in 1993 as a debutante running around a tree with Shah Rukh Khan in the blockbuster Baazigar. The 36-year-old Shilpa, sitting in her palatial bungalow on Juhu beach in a relaxed T-shirt and comfy pants, lets out a peal of laughter, “I wore a yellow, polka-dotted, frilly dress in Baazigar! Wait, it wasn’t even a dress. It was a frock. And at that time I thought that dress was the coolest and that I was the cat’s...

“But what I am proud of is the fact that I’m totally self-made. I did not hail from a film background. I come from a non-Hindi speaking, Mangalorean business family and I did not enter the industry thinking that I’d make a career out of it. The fact that I lasted so long is a huge compliment to someone like me.” Although her character in Baazigar was bumped off midway through the film, it earned her a nomination for Filmfare Best Supporting 

“I think I might have survived this long because I don’t take myself so seriously,” she laughs again. “Also, I think what helped and what’s important is for people to have respect for you. Somewhere with all my years of work, I know from the kind of reaction I get from people, that they do have some respect for me. Even if I was a sex symbol, I did it with dignity. That wasn’t the image I wanted and I know when you have a glamorous persona, there..

Shilpa the actress might like to poke fun at herself, but Shilpa the entrepreneur means business. Since winning Big Brother in 2007, she has become a household name even in the UK. Somewhere down the line, her family genes kicked in, and she diverted her attention to building herself as a health and fitness brand, propelled by the publicity garnered by her controversial yet ultimately triumphant stint on the international reality show. In the 

But she admits that she’s become more health-conscious only in the past two years. “I am at my healthiest now. After the age of 30, especially for women, you have to make sure you have the right vitamins. Our bodies do so much, our lifestyles are so hectic, so it’s all the more essential to be aware of your body’s needs as you grow older.” It helps, of course, that she has a state-of-the-art gym on the ground floor of her multi-storey house, ...