24 March,2011 01:10 PM IST | | PTI
Bollywood's 'Girl next door' Genelia D'Souza' went all her way to perfect her turn as a sword-totting warrior in the tri-lingual film 'Urumi', with special classes in martial arts, horse riding and rowing.
The actress who recently represented the film at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, plays a Portuguese girl who falls for an Indian rebel, played by Malayalam star Prithviraj, in the film.
The 24-year-old is the lead in the multi-starrer which has cameos by Vidya Balan, Prabhu Deva, Tabu and Amol Gupte among others and impressed director Santosh Sivan with her diligence. "She spent weeks learning 'Kalaripayattu' and horse riding and rowing so that she could do the action scenes herself. It was great to see her persistence and hard work," said Sivan.
And the actress was more than happy to be promoting the mega-budget film in Hong Kong and took to Twitter to tell her fans about her excitement. "Off to HK for HAF-Asia's Premier project market tonite. Urumi is 1 of the 28 prestigious films to be selected! My baby has started to crawl(sic)," she tweeted.
Set in 15th century Kerala, the film about a failed local rebellion against the Portugese explorer Vasco Da Gama, will be released in Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil.
