ileana dcruz 26 is incredibly emotional and private and does not let people in easily she may be construed as arrogant but is extremely sensitive she is her own person living her life on the values she has been brought up with she is a freespirited girl who uses her aggression as her defence her sister was considered the prettiest in school and thus ileana grew up lacking the confidence of being pretty while films happened to her accidentally she was happy to have fulfilled her mothers wish of wanting to become a star she spoke to chennai times a few days ahead of her release phata poster nikhla hero about her liberal father her determined mother and the maledominated telugu industry excerptslets talk about your childhood my father worked as a mechanical draftsman at mazagaon docks and is a catholic my mum was a muslim so my parents broke quite a few rules to get married so i was born in mumbai but when i was about 10 we shifted to goa as my parents bought a place there having grown up there i feel i am from goa my mum is a rockstar and i idolise her she was born in a conservative muslim family where the girls were not educated much and she was required to wear a burqa she felt repressed but dreamt of driving her own car walking around in jeans and wearing sunglasses and she did it even though she reads the quran and goes to the dargah she wanted to convert to christianity and she did she lives life on her own terms and i love her for that she could not speak english when she met my father and only conversed in urdu but she learnt it after getting married and completed her education i remember tagging along with her for her classes sitting on the back seat alongside her with my sister while she attended classes i came to know after i became an actress that she had dreamt of becoming one herself once teary eyed she told me you have made my dream come true it is so amazing seeing my own girl become an actresshow did you come into films films happened to me accidentally when i met marc robinson in a hotel in goa where my mum worked as a supervisor i would often go there and the manager there would see me and tell my mom that i should try being a model without my knowledge he took an appointment with marc and i was forced to meet him even though i was incredibly shy he advised me to get my portfolio done at that time my grandfather who lived in our mumbai mahim house where i was born died and so we came to mumbai to be with my grandmother due to her being alone we decided to move back to mumbai for a few years again during which time i got selected for a cosmetic