Amrita feels girl next door can be hot

New Delhi (UNI) In an industry flooded with glamour girls, she comes across as a breath of fresh air with her girl-next-door looks and her graceful screen presence in films like Ishq Vishk and Vivaah. The so-called glamour girls may be getting the major share of sound bytes on television these days but pretty Amrita Rao feels that as an actress with a girl-next-door image she too has got more than her share of audience attention. ''The girl-next-door is the best compliment given to me.

However, my definition of a girl-next-door is different from the general perception. I think you girl-next-door can also be hot. Just because she is the girl-next-door does not mean you will not notice her. In that sense, I would like to play the girl-next-door in all my films,'' Amrita says.

Talking to us in an interview, Amrita said,''what matters to me the most is that however contrasting my roles are, something in the role must appear real to that every girl-next-door sitting in the theatre. I don"t want to lose the charm of being a girl from the real world when they see me on screen.'' Currently, Amrita is basking in the success of her latest film Welcome to Sajjanpur, a satire made in the backdrop of a village in contemporary India that has been untouched by the winds of modernisation and globalisation in the country.

The film, marking the return to direction by veteran filmmaker Shyam Benegal after a long hiatus, features her in the lead along with Shreyas Talpade. ''We are all happy to see that Welcome to Sajjanpur has been so well received by audiences not only the MTV generation but also the masses. What is good to note that the film has appealed to all stratas. Also we were really surprised to find that the lingo of the film and the spirit of the residents of Sajjanpur have really caught on with the people.What is really exciting for us is that people seen to be already in the swing of the film,''Amrita said.

The film has her playing the role of a rural bottler who is illiterate, naive and gullible, oblivious to the world around her small village Sajjanpur. Being a city bred girl, what kind of preparations did she have to do for the role? ''I had to observe a lot of these ladies coming from the villages and those working in houses for a living. I know a couple of them and used to keep on observing them; their body language and the whole pathos of their husbands staying away from them and their feeling on working in the city,''she said.