Bollywood actress Bhumi Pednekar says she is not an accidental actor and that her journey has been of survival.

“It’s been five years and it still feels like a dream! I am not an accidental actor and I say this time and again. This is something that I really wanted to do and I have worked really hard to be here. I am born and brought up in Bombay so that definitely helped because just having some sort of a support system in the city, which is the city of our Hindi film industry, makes your journey slightly easy,” Bhumi said.

“However, because I am not from a traditional film family or I really didn’t have any contacts, I was very confused at first about how to go about it,” she added.

The actress said she had to convince her parents that she wanted to be an actor. “I mustered courage to speak to my parents about it. They weren’t very happy and I think they were being protective. So, I decided to join film school and the fee was expensive, so I took a loan,” she recalled.

However, she failed in film school and that really shook her. “I failed film school not because I wasn’t a good actor but because I wasn’t disciplined. That was the biggest ‘jhatka’ (jolt). It felt like I had screwed up and I had this Rs 13 lakh loan on my head. I started looking for a job for survival and to protect my dream to act. Again, my parents were completely against it because they wanted me to go back to studying, but I told them that I’ll get a degree from an open school,” said Bhumi.

She then started working as a casting assistant.

“When I was doing casting, my intent wasn’t to gain information about if I want to be an actor. I was just observing as a filmmaking student. I was like I want to be a part of this world, whatever door opens. In fact, that is how my life has been — a journey of survival. I have only tried to survive through the years till (her debut film of 2015) ‘Dum Laga Ke Haisha’. I was lucky that I kept getting these opportunities — things kept happening one after the other and primarily from YRF (Yash Raj Films),” she recalled.

Bhumi will be next seen in the heroine-centric horror drama, “Durgavati”.