"I Was So Scared": Priyanka Chopra To Oprah On Filmmaker Who Asked Her To Strip To Underwear

"I was new in the entertainment business and girls are always told that 'you don't want to get a reputation of being hard to work with.' So, I worked within the system," said the actress

Priyanka Chopra, in a recent interview to Oprah Winfrey, revealed that she was once mistreated by a filmmaker on the sets of a film in her early day in Bollywood. The actress, who is now a global icon and has worked in many Hollywood projects also, said that her "regret" till date is that she didn't "stood up" to the filmmaker because she was "scared" at that point of time. Priyanka Chopra was asked to perform "a sultry dance and strip down to her underwear" by the filmmaker on the sets of a film, the name of which she didn't reveal in the interview. She quit the film the next day and when Oprah Winfrey asked her where she found the strength to stand up for herself, Priyanka Chopra said: "I have to say that comes from my upbringing. My parents always gave me that." "My mom told me when I was nine years old, 'Whatever you do in your life, you will be financially independent.' I was told to have an opinion in a room that disagreed with me. I was always encouraged to have a voice. My regret with that incident is that I never said anything to that filmmaker. I was so scared. I was new in the entertainment business and girls are always told that 'you don't want to get a reputation of being hard to work with.' So, I worked within the system. And that's my regret is that I never stood up to him and said, 'What you did was wrong' because I was scared but the only way, I knew how to deal with it was just to step away from it and have grace under fire. And that's what I did," she added. Priyanka Chopra was crowned Miss India and Miss World in 2000. Three years after her Miss World win, she made her acting debut with The Hero: Love Story Of A Spy, in which she co-starred with Sunny Deol and Preity Zinta. She then went on to deliver box-office hits like Andaaz and Mujhse Shaadi Karogi but her breakout role was in the 2004 thriller Aitraaz. Priyanka Chopra has featured in several Hindi films like Dostana, Barfi!, Mary Kom, Fashion, Kaminey, 7 Khoon Maaf, Bajirao Mastani, The Sky Is Pink and Don.