Before the blockbusters and the brand campaigns, Deepika Padukone’s film career rested on a precise, early transaction. At 16, she asked her mother for Rs10,000 to shoot a portfolio and attached a promise to the loan: she would repay the money and make her parents proud.
The recollection comes from Padukone’s appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show while she was promoting xXx: Return of Xander Cage, and it offers an early look at the career that followed.
A small sum, a specific ambition
Padukone has said she knew by the age of 16 that she wanted to act. The portfolio shoot was not glamour in the abstract; it was the first practical asset for the career she was trying to enter.
She described the request as a deliberate conversation. “Can I please borrow Rs10,000 from you?” she recalled asking, adding that she promised to repay the money and make her parents proud. The phrasing matters because it framed the loan as an investment, not an allowance.
The sporting parent who took the road first
Padukone also placed the choice in a family context. Her father, Prakash Padukone, was a badminton champion at a time when professional sport was an unusual career route in India. She said he played when most families wanted their children to become doctors or lawyers.
Asked whether she considered following him into badminton, she said she could have made him happy, but he encouraged her to follow her own path. That encouragement likely mattered more than the Rs10,000 itself.
The record since
- 2007: Debuts in Om Shanti Om opposite Shah Rukh Khan.
- 2013–2018: Chennai Express, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, Piku, Bajirao Mastani and Padmaavat.
- 2023–2024: Pathaan, Jawan and Kalki 2898 AD.
- Next: King, again with Shah Rukh Khan.
For Bollywood Chronicle readers, the anecdote is not simply celebrity trivia. It is an early data point in a career built on long-term bets: a portfolio loan before there was evidence, a Hollywood crossover, and a return to event films such as Pathaan and Jawan.
The Rs10,000 has long since been dwarfed by box-office numbers, but the promise attached to it is the part that has aged well.
Source: Gulf News
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