She was popularly known as “the Bru girl”, based on a coffee ad she starred in, but Megha Burman is ready to move beyond the world of ad films. Her petite frame and pixie-like charm belie the steely determination to make it big as an actress that lies within Megha, and the Kolkata native is currently in New York, reading scripts for roles in various independent films.
For now however, she is soaking in the experience of having her first film, Dam999, out in the theatres. In the days leading up to its release, Megha says she experienced no anxiety. “I was really looking forward to it,” she says. While the film doesn’t seem to have caused too much of a storm at the box office, Megha certainly seems to have caught a few eyes in her role as a demure Pakistani woman named Raziya. That too amid a cast of well-known Indian and international actors.
Megha says she wasn’t scared of being “lost in the crowd”. “To me, the quality of the work is more important than the number of scenes,” she says. “Every scene is important, or else it would not have been a part of the film. All the nine characters in Dam999 were significant to the story line..”
Working with so many established actors however, did influence Megha to research her role and prepare herself thoroughly before the shoot began. She says, “I read the script several times. Then I started working from inside out. I thought about my character’s traits, her history, relationship with her parents and the emotional bonds she’d formed.”
Since her debut film was an Indo-American venture, Megha has had a ringside view of how things function in both the Indian film industry and Hollywood. “The West has a different work culture altogether,” she points out.