Nora Fatehi: Memes don’t affect me

Mumbai, April 1 

Actress Nora Fatehi feels she is the “meme-queen”, and says that memes dont affect her.

Nora is popular in the virtual world, courtesy memes around her. The actress doesn’t get offended by them.

“I think I’m the meme-queen. I even post them on my stories. So, memes don’t affect me because by nature they’re supposed to be funny and I take them in my stride because I have a comedy streak to me. Someone said that if you become a meme then you’ve made it,” she said.

Nora moved from Canada to India to become an actress in Bollywood. She managed to bag a few acting projects initially, including “Roar: Tigers of the Sundarbans” and “Crazy Cukkad Family” — they all were low-profile and went unnoticed.

Then, her appearance on “Bigg Boss” and the dance numbers “Manohari” in “Baahubali: The Beginning” changed the tide. People started noticing Nora, and soon she was belting out the hit dance numbers, “Dilbar” (“Satyamev Jayate”) and “O saki saki” (“Batla House”).

Looking back at her decision to shift to India from Canada, she shared: “People asked me why I would choose to leave a country like Canada to go to India when I don’t even know anyone there. However, I have lived in many countries. My family is from Morocco and I have also lived in Saudi for three years. So, I’m a multicultural chick. So coming to India wasn’t scary. Also, being someone who is well-versed with Hindi cinema, I knew I wasn’t going to have any cultural shock. But, something that I didn’t anticipate was the struggle in the journey.”

She was last seen in dance movie “Street Dancer 3D”, which also features Varun Dhawan and Shraddha Kapoor. The actress opened up about her life in an episode of “Starry Nights GEN Y”, which is aired in India on Zee Cafe.

Talking about her struggle, she said: “My first-ever job was as a retail sales associate. I was sixteen and I had to work for many reasons. There were a lot of financial issues in my family and I was supposed to be the one that would step up and become the breadwinner. After that, I did numerous things such as waitressing in restaurants and even working at telemarketing offices where I had to cold-call people.”

Asked to name an actress she envies, Nora said: “I envy Deepika (Padukone)”, going on to reveal her fascination with Sanjay Leela Bhansali movies as being the reason for the same.