Five minutes into a conversation with Gul Panag and you know she is different.

Not donning a ‘holier-than-thou’ persona and being truly non-pretentious, she comes across as truly different from the rest of her ilk belonging to the glamour world. This is why you are hardly surprised when she openly declares that she could hardly identify with ‘Nimmi’, the character she plays in MANORAMA SIX FEET UNDER.

“Of course it was a lot challenging and good fun”, she says. “The easiest thing is to play yourself but then you end up looking and talking the same in each of your films. Sorry, but I am sure it would really become boring after a point to play a similar character”, explains Gul who has made her presence felt in films like DOR and DHOOP.

Her character in the film demands her to be natural as she can. “This is why you would see me in the kind of wardrobe that a wife of an upstart Government serving Engineer (played by Abhay Deol) can afford”, she says in a lighter vein, “You have to wear clothes which could possibly have a Rs. 300 tag!”

She is treading a different path in spite of being crowned a beauty queen. Won’t it go against the kind of persona that audience perceives her to be carry?

Gul gets candid here, “See, every individual wants to carve a niche for himself. Even I want to, though I never intended myself to be compared with other beauty queens. I want to be part of some exciting films. DHOOP, DOR, MANORAMA SIX FEET UNDER – all these films have been different and have required me to be non-glam. However HELLO is different since it requires me to play a young and successful urban woman working at a call center.”

Other than HELLO, Gul is also working in films like Sanjay Gupta’s ALIBAUG and SUMMER OF 2007.