As a rule, Vidya Balan doesn’t check her phone when she’s shooting. So when her husband, managing director of the Walt Disney Company India, Siddharth Roy Kapur, was frantically trying to get in touch with her to inform her she was now a Padma Shri, he had to wait several hours. “When I finally called him back, he told me the Ministry of Home Affairs had called him to give the news. I thought it was a joke. It took some time to seep in. Such an award wasn’t even on my radar. I’m so humbled by it,” she says. The others on the list included actor Paresh Rawal and script-writer Sooni Taraporewala.

The actress admits that at 35 and with just nine years of experience, she didn’t expect to be clubbed with such stalwarts. And yet, she doesn’t want the honour to influence her career choices. “I always want to be myself. My job lets me live different people’s lives and that’s what I love the most about it,” she says. Balan has recently wrapped up the shoot for Bobby Jasoos, where she plays a sleuth. But the genre she adores the most is romance, which is partly what drew her to Shaadi ke Side Effects, her next release. “I’m a big romantic and this is in keeping with that. Plus, I can’t think of too many films that explore a married couple’s relationship,” she says.

The film, directed by Saket Choudhary, continues from where his earlier film Pyaar ke Side Effects ended. The premise — a newly wed man griping about losing his independence post marriage — isn’t entirely new. Before you can ask, Vidya says, “It is a stereotypical representation of marriage. This idea about marriage being scary and men being tied down to a nagging woman has been repeatedly used in films and books.” She adds that the humourous script, which is smart but not chauvinistic, sets the film apart.

The other strength of the film, she says, is her pairing with co-star Farhan Akhtar. “We didn’t know each other too well. I think a certain amount of unfamiliarity always helps to build chemistry,” she says. To sceptics who believe they make an unlikely pair, she retorts, “We are unusual actors and that is what has worked.”

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