Priyanka Chopra is reflecting upon her time as an actress, detailing a moment where she felt her boundaries were crossed.
An India native, Chopra's career accelerated after she won the Miss World 2000 pageant. She began starring in Bollywood films, and was hired to work with a director she was unfamiliar with. "This may have been 2002 or '03," she told The Zoe Report.
"I’m undercover, I’m seducing the guy — obviously that’s what girls do when they’re undercover," she explained of her character. "But I’m seducing the guy and you have to take off one piece of clothing [at a time]. I wanted to layer up. The filmmaker was like, ‘No, I need to see her underwear. Otherwise why is anybody coming to watch this movie?’"
"He didn’t say it to me," she recalled of the heartbreaking moment. "He said it to the stylist in front of me. It was such a dehumanizing moment."
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"It was a feeling of, ‘I’m nothing else outside of how I can be used, my art is not important, what I contribute is not important,'" she remembered thinking of herself.
Chopra said she continued working for two more days, ultimately walking off the project. Supported by her late father, Chopra chose to pay back the production team all that was previously spent on filming.
"I just couldn't look at him every day," the actress, 40, said of the unnamed director.
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A representative for the actress did not immediately return Fox News Digital's request for comment.
Several years later, Chopra would eventually transition from Bollywood to Hollywood, a move she says was challenging. She is now married to musician Nick Jonas. The two share daughter Malti, 1.
"People didn’t want to take meetings with me because they thought I was a Bollywood actor and I couldn’t do mainstream American movies," she said of her pivot to the United States.
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"I had been on the cover of this [fashion] magazine six times in India and they wouldn’t take a meeting with me in America. Because they were like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what we’ll do with her.’"
Today, Chopra is one of the highest-paid Indian actresses in Hollywood.
"I was 17 years old when I started doing this. I’ve been picked apart — my actions, decisions have been scrutinized," she said while acknowledging she created a different public and private personality for herself.
"I’ve learned how to protect myself by building barriers and walls," she added, "[but] now that I’ve done this for long enough, the lines are blurring for me. The public person and the real person are kind of becoming the same."
"I’m more comfortable talking about myself to you than I would have been five years ago. I was a lot more guarded," Chopra admitted, "Maybe it’s maturity, maybe it’s coming into my own, finding a confidence in yourself and not seeking. I’m still figuring that out."
