Freida Pinto covers the latest issue of The Edit, net-a-porter’s online, in-house magazine. The style of the shoot is “warrior” I think, and it’s okay. Freida tends to agree to some weird editorial concepts, almost like magazines are trying to figure out what kind of crazy stuff they can do to her to make her less beautiful. You can see the full Edit piece here. Some highlights:

Meeting Meryl Streep: “I wanted to tell Meryl how inspired I was by her, but the words weren’t coming out properly. Then she turned and said, ‘Oh, Freida!’ I couldn’t believe she knew who I was. She has this larger-than-life persona, but when you’re talking to her, it’s woman to woman. She’s a grand actress and a grand human being, but in every other sense she’s not grand at all.”

Being unfulfilled: “Even though I was happy that the projects kept coming and getting better, there was a part of me that was not feeling fulfilled.”

Becoming an ambassador for the Because I am a Girl campaign: “You hear that phrase so much. ‘I got raped… because I’m a girl’, ‘I can’t go out at night…because I’m a girl’, when really it should be, ‘Because I’m a girl, I can give birth to the next generation of enlightened males.’”

Chasing the ‘white girl’ roles: “It’s hard because the first thing people see when I go into an audition is that I am 100% Indian, but I don’t remember a time in my life when I did not see myself as a world citizen. When I watch films, I can always imagine myself as the female lead – even if it’s Minnie Mouse.”

Being called “beautiful”: “It’s not necessarily the way I see myself. In fact, I don’t even like to look at myself in the mirror. But I’m aware of the perception and I always say that if it’s because of that one line in Slumdog where Latika is described as “the most beautiful girl in the world”, then I have to do everything that I can to change that perception.”

Aging in the industry: “I’m excited about the kind of roles I might get in my thirties; I’m hoping they’re going to be very different. I’m lucky that I haven’t been overexposed. There were a lot of films I said no to, because I wanted to concentrate on longevity.”

[From The Edit]

The “chasing white girl roles” is apparently a joke she has with her agent about what auditions she goes out for and what meetings she takes. I believe that they’re saying that, as with much of Hollywood, almost every script is written for the female characters to be white, and Freida auditions anyway and sometimes she gets the roles.

Meanwhile, remember that story Dev Patel told about Mario Testino telling him he shouldn’t be with Freida because he’s a goofy-looking guy and Freida is beautiful? Well, Pop Sugar asked Freida about it and this is what she said:

“It is a crazy story. I wasn’t actually there, at that show, but [Patel] did come home and tell me about it. And I go, ‘Did you misunderstand what [Mario] was saying, or did he really [say that]?’ And [Patel’s] like, ‘No, that’s what he said.’ [Mario] probably didn’t even mean it that way. I don’t know. I wasn’t there to witness it, but if that’s how someone felt, if they wanted to air it, then they should be allowed to.”

[From PopSugar]

Um… that’s sort of rude? Of course Testino had the “right” to say whatever insulting thing he wanted to say. But why not just say “wow, Testino was rude to my boyfriend at the time.”

Photos courtesy of Chad Pitman/The Edit.