To say that Priyanka Chopra has her fingers in many pies would be an understatement indeed. The 39-year-old has been, in turns, a beauty queen, a Bollywood actress, a singer, a Hollywood star, an author, an activist, a producer, and latterly, a mother. Indeed, versatility seems to be second-nature to the talented thespian, who was born and raised in India but also educated in the US. And it’s this quality – in addition to her looks and smarts – that has seen her thrive through a seemingly endless series of career changes that would have most feeling daunted. Here, we explore some of the trials and triumphs of this trailblazing modern woman.
Racial Discord
Chopra was born on 18 July 1982 in the Indian city of Jamshedpur to army physician parents. Through the family’s various postings, she spent her childhood in an assortment of locations including Delhi, Ladakh, Chandigarh, Pune, Ambala and Lucknow. As a teenager, she moved to Massachusetts and then Iowa to live with her aunt, and as an outsider, she was the target of bullying by her peers. “I was a teenager who did not even know how to wear heels, but I learnt… I didn’t know how to fit in,” she recalls. “Also, I faced some racial issues. Some students called me ‘browny’, they also pointed fingers at me for being Indian, but I survived.”
Engineering Dreams
Young Priyanka originally aspired to study aeronautical engineering and work for NASA. However, when her mother signed her up for the Miss India beauty pageant in 2000, her life was forever changed. After clinching the crown at that particular event, the Quantico and The Matrix Resurrections star would go on to win several other competitions, including the prestigious Miss World accolade that same year. Speaking of her thwarted ambitions, she muses, “I’ve been in the public since I was 17 years old and it’s really all I’ve known. Being crowned Miss India and then Miss World, suddenly I went on from [hopefully] becoming an aeronautical engineer [to a] carefree teenager to standing on a world stage, where I have to have a point of view on probably the most important world events.”
Bollywood Bread & Butter
Hot on the heels of her newfound fame, Chopra was offered the opportunity to segue into an acting career within Bollywood – the world’s largest producer of films. Within a handful of years, she had catapulted herself to the forefront of the industry, becoming one of the country’s most successful actresses and selling billions of cinema tickets annually. Simultaneously, she kicked off her singing career, lending her vocal talents to several songs in the movies she starred in.
Hollywood High Life
Right at the peak of her career, Chopra’s manager suggested she return to the United States to pursue her musical career on an international scale. Recalling that decision, she says, “I wasn’t looking to do work in America. I was at this amazing point in my career. I was doing critically acclaimed work and winning awards. So I kind of laughed at the idea.”
Ultimately, though, she took the chance, signed with Universal Music Group, and became the first Bollywood star to be represented by Los Angeles-based Creative Artists Agency. Several singles – including collaborations with such noted musicians as Pitbull and will.i.am of Black Eyed Peas fame – followed. “It was just magical,” she reminisces. “Those three, four years just went by. I was being serenaded by this rock-and-roll lifestyle.”
People’s Person
In yet another transition, the Bollywood actress-turned-singer hit a major milestone when she nabbed the lead role of Alex Parrish in the spy thriller TV series Quantico in 2015. Speaking of her personal connection to the character, she says, “Quantico for me was a really big win. Not just because of being the first time an Indian or South Asian actor was the lead of a network show, but, more than that, because I was not put in the box, like the show wasn’t My Big Fat Indian Wedding.” Her acting chops were praised by critics and the public alike; she was the first South Asian actor to win a People’s Choice Award, and went on to appear in a smattering of movies after the series wrapped in 2018.
Meet Cute
The story of Chopra’s relationship with singer Nick Jonas is now the stuff of legends. Having initially slid into her Twitter DMs (direct messages) back in 2016, boy met girl in person a year later at the Vanity Fair Oscars after-party. “He swept me off my feet,” she shares in her 2021 memoir, Unfinished. “Once we started dating, it felt like I was being carried by a gigantic, unstoppable wave.” After a high-profile romance spanning a proposal after just two months and marriage within the year, they tied the knot at two super-sumptuous wedding ceremonies in India at the end of 2018. Despite some raised eyebrows over their age difference – Chopra is 10 years her husband’s senior – and suspicions that the relationship was all for show, the pair still seem very much in love, and recently welcomed their first child via surrogacy.
The Good Fight
From beauty queen to Bollywood actress to Hollywood star and social media influencer, Chopra’s CV is already impressive, but in 2015 she expanded her horizons even further by starting her own production company, the Mumbai-based Purple Pebble Pictures. Galvanised by the struggles she faced in the entertainment industry, her impetus for starting this venture – which she runs alongside her mother, Madhu – was to create a platform to foster local talent and showcase the South Asian narrative from a more authentic point of view.
“I think collectively each one of us can push Hollywood, and push the powers that be, and be demanding and not just polite about it. I’ve been polite for a very long time. Now it’s time to say, ‘I’m sorry, that doesn’t work,’ and to fight for your characters,” she explains. “As a producer, I’m so grateful that I get the opportunity to do that, to be able to make stories and look for stories that normalise different cultures of the world.”
Clearly her passion has reaped big rewards. Last year’s production, The White Tiger – a film adaptation (in which Chopra also starred) of the eponymous Aravind Adiga novel that explores the imbalances of India’s caste system – was an Oscar contender for Best Adapted Screenplay.
(Text: Tenzing Thondup)