Sequin Skirt Set: Lovebirds; Luminous Connect Gold & Diamond Bangle, Fierce Weave Gold Bangle, Elegant Precision Gold & Diamond Bangle, Violet Velvet Amethyst Bangle, Glitzy Link Diamond Bangle, Sleek Blink Diamond Ring, Colourful Statement Pink Tourmaline & Gold Ring, Braided Promise Diamond Ring, Golden Crest Gold & Diamond Ring, Directional Grace Diamond Ring, Interlocking Elegance Diamond Ring, Twist Halo Diamond Ring, Petal Arc Diamond Ring, Chic Radiance Diamond Ring: Mia by TanishqEven now, months after the release, she carries that debut with a quiet humility. There’s a warm smile, animated eyes, and a genuine “Hi, I’m Aneet” for everyone in the room. Even though, of course, everyone already knows her. It’s not a cursory hello or a polite acknowledgment. It’s intentional, almost earnest, as if she wants to be fully present with every single person in the space. “I just love seeing people smile,” she says, her voice light and melodic. “It makes me happy more than anything else.”
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“I just love seeing people smile”
From there, her energy is immediate. She giggles mid-sentence, jumps lightly from one spot to another, and breaks into a spontaneous little dance while the stylist adjusts her outfit. It’s not performative. It’s instinctive, almost unknowingly pulling everyone into her orbit. There’s confidence here, yes, but it’s the kind that feels lived in, not rehearsed. The kind that comes from someone who has already been through disbelief, fear, and emotional whiplash, and decided to stay open anyway. Beneath the animated surface, there is also a person who listens. Maybe it’s the Libran in her, but there definitely is a balance here between extraversion and introspection. You see it in the way she thinks before she answers, circles back, corrects herself mid-thought, as she admits, “I’m still discovering who I am.”
Embroidered Co-Ord Set: Anita Dongre; Lotus Radiance Diamond Choker, Directional Grace Diamond Ring: Mia by Tanishq
Finding The Feeling
Before films, before auditions, before the Yash Raj Films debut, there was a little girl with a big mind. “I was very oblivious,” Aneet laughs, describing her childhood. “I was always daydreaming, in my own world.” Growing up in what she describes as a “pretty normal life” in Amritsar, there wasn’t always room for emotional excess… for wanting to scream, laugh too loudly, or to feel too deeply. So she found another way in.
Poetry became that space. Words gave shape to feelings she didn’t yet have language for. Writing was her outlet to process everything she felt inside. “I loved the adrenaline of it,” she remembers. “I couldn’t really live without it.” It wasn’t about performance back then. It was about having an outlet for emotions that had nowhere else to go; about finding somewhere safe to place all her thoughts and feelings.
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Acting, when it eventually arrived, was an extension. Still, reality demanded pragmatism. There was always a Plan B. Education mattered. College mattered. “I needed to find myself there,” she explains. The odds, after all, were against her. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not like this. And yet.
The Day Everything Changed
When the call from Yash Raj Films came, it wasn’t dramatic. Just an instruction: come to the office. Aneet flew down from Amritsar with her father, unsure, bracing herself for disappointment. “I didn’t allow myself to react,” she recalls. “I was like, until someone says it, you don’t have it.”When Aditya Chopra finally said the words – “You’ve got it” – Aneet didn’t react the way you might expect. “I didn’t really have a reaction at all,” she admits. “It was too big to process.”
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There were no ters, no immediate joy. Just a strange stillness, like time had paused.Her father’s reaction stayed with her longer than her own. “I’ve never seen my dad like that,” she says quietly. “He just looked at me like… has this really happened?” And, underneath the happiness, there was fear, a shared anxiety. “We were both actually very scared,” she admits with endearing honesty. “This was a world we didn’t know.” Even after contracts were signed, certainty didn’t arrive. “Anything can happen,” she kept thinking. “You never know.” That sense of disbelief, interestingly, has never fully left her.
“My father and I were both actually very scared. This was a world we didn’t know. Anything can happen.”
Doing It For Love
The months leading up to Saiyaara’s release were filled with anticipation and anxiety. “There was so much preparation,” Aneet recalls. “And yet everything felt inadequate.” She wanted to be enough. To somehow do justice to the opportunity. To honour the trust placed in her by a studio that had launched some of the most iconic careers in Hindi cinema. Together with her co-star Ahaan, she held onto one guiding thought. Both first-timers, both standing at the edge of something enormous, they found reassurance in each other’s nerves, excitement, and shared intent. She reveals, “We kept saying one thing to each other: ‘Let’s remind the world of a kind of love they’ve forgotten. Let’s do it for love.’ We said it all the time.”
Embroidered Co-Ord Set: Anita Dongre; Lotus Radiance Diamond Choker, Directional Grace Diamond Ring: Mia by Tanishq
“Ahaan and I kept saying one thing to each other: ‘Let’s remind the world of a kind of love they’ve forgotten. Let’s do it for love.’ We said it all the time.”
Grand, sacrificial love. The kind that risks everything and asks for nothing in return. That was the plan. “It stopped being about ‘am I acting well?’” she explains. “It became about whether we were serving the larger picture.” It was also Ahaan who helped shift her perspective when the pressure began to feel overwhelming. One day, he said something that stayed with her. “Who cares what the film does or doesn’t do?” he asked her. Imagine this – you’ve given one whole year of your life, and it’s now immortalised in these two hours. It’s there forever. You’ve given everything you had, and there’s nothing more you could have done.” When the film was released, Aneet’s first thought wasn’t numbers or success. It was simply: it’s out.
Only later, much later, did reality catch up. The messages. The calls. The realisation that something rare had happened. “It was too much for my nervous system,” she says honestly. “I couldn’t register it.” Now, looking back, she understands the magnitude. The responsibility. “This doesn’t happen to a lot of people,” she says softly. “And it happened to me.”
The Weight Of Being Seen
Fame, for Aneet, arrived fast and loudly. With it came opinions. Perceptions. Narratives she didn’t author. “Emotionally, it was jarring,” she remembers. “So many people having opinions about you.” There’s something deeply self-aware in how she speaks about this. She knows this is the cost of visibility. She’s learnt not to care too much. Or, rather, not to let it consume her.
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She had to absorb the realisation that millions of people could believe things about her that weren’t true. That her story wasn’t always hers to tell. “That was strange,” she says. “Because I know who I am. The people close to me know who I am.” Over time, she adjusted. Just by caring less about what she couldn’t control. “You can’t be caring so much,” she points out. “You have to live.”
What grounds her is memory. Family. The Padda household in Amritsar, where meals are insisted upon, movies are watched together, and life feels “just easy.” Where her mother shops with her, her father talks to her about life, and love is not conditional. She describes it as “a lot of your typical dysfunctional family… My parents think I’m really strong,” she says, smiling. That pride matters to her more than any headline.
Who She Is, Really
Off camera, Aneet is observant. Constantly moving. She loves people watching. Adores animals. Smiles at strangers. She sings. Plays the guitar. Writes when she feels like it. She’s also deeply emotional, but not fragile. Her friends call her emotionally intelligent; her parents call her strong – really strong. Strength, in her world, is sticking to her guns even when the odds feel impossible. “They’re so proud that I did what I always wanted to do,” she says, and you can hear how much that matters to her.
That personality extends to her relationship with Vaani, her Saiyaara character. There are overlaps – particularly in vulnerability – but she resists defining herself through one role. “I’m not just one thing,” she says. “We contain multitudes.” She’s honest about still figuring herself out, about being confused sometimes about who she is beyond the screen. And she’s comfortable with that uncertainty.
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What she knows, without hesitation, is what she wants next. Not scale. Not validation. She wants honesty. She wants heart. “Anything I do next,” she says, “it just has to have heart. Something magical that helps me discover a part of myself I haven’t met before.”
“Anything I do next, should just has to have heart. Something magical that helps me discover a part of myself I haven’t met before.”
The day has ended, the shoot is wrapped. Aneet is still smiling, still thanking everyone individually, still bouncing gently on her feet. Asked what she’d like to say to her future self, her answer is simple: “I hope I become more of me every single day,” she says. “I hope I’m fearless. I hope I live.”
At 23, she doesn’t claim to have all the answers. What she has is instinct, empathy, and a deep love for the work. And maybe that’s exactly what makes her one of Bollywood’s most exciting new faces.
Photographer: Aneev Rao
StyList: Surbhi Shukla
Art director: Bendi Vishan
Fashion Editor: Ashwini Arun Kumar
Makeup: Pompy Hans
Hair: Flavien Heldt
Styling Assistance: Vedica Vora
Videography: Abhishek Trivedi
Also Read: Find Out How Dr Srimathy Kesan Is Inspiring Girls To Reach For The Stars
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