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Aneet Padda recalls the first time she realised she wanted to be an actor: ‘I remember thinking, wow…’
Aneet Padda’s journey to acting started much earlier than fans might think. Take a look at the moment where she realised she wanted to be an actor
Actor Aneet Padda may be a breakout name today after Saiyaara, but her journey into acting began long before the spotlight found her. The young star opened up in a new Grazia interview about the moment she first realised she wanted to become an actor — and how a simple piece of advice from her mother changed everything.
“Stop overthinking and say it the way you feel it…”
Before her striking screen presence in Saiyaara, Aneet made her debut with Salaam Venky (2022), where she played Vishal Jethwa’s love interest, Nandini. Yet, that wasn’t the performance that made her fall in love with acting.
The 23-year-old recalled that her earliest taste of performance came in a school poetry competition, long before she knew what stagecraft meant.“As a kid, I was this oblivious child, always daydreaming,” she laughs. “I would memorise the poem and deliver it very blandly, and my mom kept saying, ‘You just have to understand what it means. Stop overthinking and say it the way you feel it.’” That small piece of advice became the foundation of her acting process. She wont first prize in that competition. “I remember thinking, wow, that feels kind of nice. I wouldn’t mind another one,” she added.
From school plays to self-discovery
Over the years, Aneet continued performing in school plays — sometimes even cast as “the equivalent of a tree,” as she jokes — without ever seeing acting as a real career. But her teachers and principal saw something in her before she did.
“They noticed the emotion I brought to poetry could naturally translate to a performance,” Aneet said. One day, her school principal told her, “You’re very good at this. I don’t think you know.” That, she admits, was the first time she considered acting as a skill and not just an extracurricular activity.
On fan love and the pressure of support
Now, with a strong fan base and social media following, Aneet says she feels deeply connected to her supporters — even if the love can feel overwhelming at times. “I’m very sensitive. I feel things deeply. So, the responsibility of love, that weight of wanting to do right by the people who support you, that can feel pressurising. It’s beautiful, but sometimes, it is a lot,” she said.
Her fans also often create emotional video edits featuring her and Saiyaara co-star Ahaan Panday. On these, she added: “I cry once a week looking at the edits my fans make. The effort, the love, I just hope I can do justice to it.”
What’s next for Aneet Padda
After Saiyaara's massive success, where she played Ahaan Panday's love interest, Aneet remains tight-lipped about future projects, she confirmed that her next film, Shakti Shalini, is part of Maddock Films’ expanding horror-comedy universe and is slated for a December 2026 release. Most details for this project are under wraps.
