Bollywood wives

SLOWLY, her lips move closer and closer to his lips. Then, as they're almost touching, the sound of the doorbell punctuates the air. The couple swiftly separate from their embrace. Shilpa Shetty isn't about to let a kiss on the big screen plunge her into a similar situation as happened in real life.

A kiss isn't just a kiss when you're an Indian movie star and glamorous Celebrity Big Brother winner like Shetty. Displays of public affection, along with kissing on the big screen, are taboo in Indian society.

She may be a high profile celebrity but she isn't about to jeopardise her future career so soon after the Richard Gere incident. Her screen (almost) kiss isn't for real, but the Hollywood actor meant it when he grabbed her and planted kisses on her cheeks at an HIV awareness event in New Delhi.

His light-hearted, impulsive action offended many Indians, with crowds in several cities burning effigies of him in protest at this break with tradition. Arrest warrants for him and Shetty were issued by a judge after a complaint from the public.

Having survived two of the year's biggest controversies - the racism row on Celebrity Big Brother, when Jade Goody was accused of bullying her, and the Gere kissing incident - Shetty is in London for the world premiere of her first film since the C4 reality show turned the model turned-Bollywood-actress into an international celebrity.

Last night, the Bollywood film Life Is A... Metro became the first Indian film to receive a premiere in London's Leicester Square, something that wouldn't have happened without Shetty in the cast.

Her role promises to provoke comment too. In fact, the whole film displays a frankness about relationships and sex that's still tame by Western standards but seems quite daring for an Asian film, which most cinemagoers view as happy song-and-dance affairs.

In the movie, she plays a bored wife and mother who has an illicit affair, one of several love affairs in the multi-layered plot and, although essentially an ensemble piece, Shetty is the performer that most will pay to see.

She apologises for being late for the interview as she joins director Anurag Basu and producer Ronnie Screwvala, who've started answering questions without her. "Sorry, I was doing 47 other interviews," she says, looking impossibly glamorous in white jacket, yellow T-shirt and jeans (which an eagle-eyed female observer thought bore the Beckham brand). Pretty soon, Shetty will be a brand herself. She even mentions the word "brand" in connection with herself after mentioning the film, the book, the perfume and whatever else can be sold with her name attached.

This daughter of wealthy parents is nobody's fool. Not only tough enough to survive the racism and bullying inside the Big Brother house but canny enough to make the most of the exposure it has brought her. At the same time, she's doesn't underestimate the perils of the route she's taking.

"It's a tough job to do," she admits. "You can't please everybody and, at the end of the day, I try to keep myself happy. Call me selfish or whatever. I try to do the right thing and sometimes you unknowingly offend people."

She's a proud Indian who feels very happy that people have accepted her in the West. "It's people in Britain who have given me my new-found fame here and we must give credit where it's deserved," she says. "It's also British people who voted for me and wanted to see me so I'm very happy. I feel I'm a good eclectic mix of all cultures".

She actually made Life Is A... Metro before Celebrity Big Brother in a role that marks a change from her usual Bollywood image. The 40 or so movies she's made since her 1993 debut as a murdered college student in Bazigaar (Gambler) haven't deviated much from the typical Indian leading lady part.

The role of Shikha, however, calls for her to be a wife and mother, and tearful over whether to run away with her lover. She pays tribute to the makers for casting her in the first place. "I am synonymous with glamour and my forte has always been songs and dances which are very much Indian movies. I'm very proud to be associated with this film which is trying to do something different and unpretentious," says Shetty.

"Audiences are ready and looking for something different in Indian cinema, and Metro has got a balance between reality and entertainment. For those reasons I wanted to do it. I didn't have any apprehension doing a role like that because it was such a good role. Shikha is a good character and it was a meaty role and I'd be foolish as an actor to say no to something like that."

Director Anurag Basu filmed on location on the streets of Mumbai, which didn't worry Shetty. But she did find shooting the railway station scenes at a place two hours outside the city "quite tedious". It's the closest she gets to any sign of diva-ish behaviour during the entire interview.

Like the other events that have propelled her into the headlines, she meets any potential problems head on, recognising that the way relationships, especially from the female view, in Life Is A... Metro, might cause a few raised eyebrows.

"We've just played characters and made a film that's unprententious," she says. "In no way have the writer and director tried to commercialise things. We've tried to project them in ways that are extremely real and, as far as I'm concerned, the character was so believable for me and still so deeply rooted with the Indian culture.

"It is a tightrope walk for her to actually balance her family and then have all the reasons and the opportunity to get out of that marriage, and still choose not to. It just goes to show how culturally bound she is. That is how 95 per cent of Indian women would react.

"I'm sure a lot of people fall out of love after marriage and go through very unhappy marriages in India, but most women are actually the reason they're able to stick the marriage together because they're the ones who are very, very giving, more resilient, more emotionally strong and more committed."

But isn't it a potentially controversial view? She laughs. "Controversial, haven't I been that before?," she says. "I completely respect that aspect, it's very difficult to be able to sacrifice but it's very easy for a women to do that because once you are a mother everything else takes a back seat."

Life Is A... Metro opens in cinemas on Friday.