How Preity Zinta prepared for 'Heaven On Earth'

The spunky and outspoken actress had to do a lot of preparation to play a character that is in contrast to her real self. In Deepa Mehta’s Heaven On Earth , Preity plays a meek, submissive Punjabi wife who is physically and psychologically assaulted by her husband in Canada.

Now, even though Preity is the owner of Punjab’s IPL team, the actress admits she can’t speak Punjabi fluently. But all her dialogues, including long monologues, in the film required Preity to speak the language. So Preity slogged hard, took a crash course in Punjabi, and learnt to speak her dialogues properly after a practice of over one-and-a-half months.

However, this was only half the battle won. Preity, who hasn’t experienced domestic violence in real life, had to get an insight into the lives of wives who suffer violence at the hands of their husbands.

So she read the relevant books (including ‘The Woman Who Walked Into Doors’ by Roddy Doyle). She also saw a documentary by Deepa Mehta in which the director interviews kids that saw domestic violence in their homes.

Preity says going through all this material gave her a reference point for her character.

And Preity’s performance has been so terrific in the film that Deepa Mehta has unhesitatingly said that Preity is the most talented actress she has worked with so far. That’s certainly a great compliment coming from a director who has worked with the likes of Shabana Azmi , Nandita Das and Seema Biswas in her past films.