In 2024, Aditi Rao Hydari and stylist Santu Misra were at Cannes and were trying to get a table at a packed-out restaurant. “The concierge looked at me and said, ‘You MUST have a table’,” she recalls. “I’d rather believe that people are doing it because they are genuinely nice, and not because of how I look.”

It’s exactly the kind of thing you’d expect a pretty person to say. Rao Hydari, 37, has amber eyes, sharp, delicate features and perfect skin. She’s been the global face for beauty brand L’Oreal; modelled for Sabyasachi, Tarun Tahiliani and Gaurav Gupta; and most recently, she was part of the advertising campaign for Indriya, the jewellery label launched by Aditya Birla Group.

But getting taken seriously in cinema has taken a while. Critics and audiences have loved her as Bibbojaan, the courtesan and freedom fighter on the Netflix show Heeramandi, which premiered in May. Her sensual walk in one scene has a life of its own online. Plus, she was in two blockbuster series last year, playing another fiery courtesan Anarkali in Taj: Divided by Blood (Zee) and movie star Sumitra Kumari in Jubilee (2023).

It seems that finally, 15 years after she made her Hindi film debut in Delhi 6 (2009), the stars are starting to align. She doesn’t mind the wait. “When you do things yourself, grow and learn by yourself, you feel a certain ownership of the journey,” she says.

It also means that success hasn’t come on the back of her looks. It’s the kind of flex that would make both Rao Hydari and her mother, classical singer Vidya Rao, proud.

On beauty

She knew her mother was a beautiful woman. “Friends would tell me that my mother looked like Audrey Hepburn,” recalls Rao Hydari. She watched Roman Holiday at age 12. She agreed. “Everyone used to call me Little Vidya when I was growing up,” Rao Hydari says. “They’d say I’d grow up to look exactly like her. I did.”

She admits to spending too much time in front of the mirror as a child. She’d take too long to decide what to wear and how to style her hair. She’d nearly always miss the school bus in the process. So, Rao Hydari’s mother got her hair chopped off. “I looked like a boy. But thanks to mom, I’m not vain today,” she says.

On the flip side, when Rao Hydari finally faced the camera as a young woman, she found that she didn’t know a thing about makeup. She learnt on the job, picking up tips from make-up artists, and critically examining her features, to figure out what beautiful women across the world inherently know: That less is more.

And she learnt to bring her love for beauty to the job, in a surprising way. “There’s beauty in perfumes; smells transport you to a place of possibility. To date, for every character I’ve played, I’ve associated a signature scent,” Rao Hydari says. For Bibbojaan, who excels at pleasing nawabs and at politics, the sweet tea-rose and lily notes, inspired by her mother, just didn’t feel right. She ultimately used a French perfumed oil with notes of Jasmine to better portray that mix of romance and revolution. “The right role, just like the right fragrance, finds me.”

Finer things

For Rao Hydari, perhaps more than most, appreciating beauty and the arts has come easy. Both her parents were born into aristocratic families from the erstwhile state of Hyderabad. She was familiar with the sound of the tanpura even before she was born – her mother played for her when she was in the womb. For years, she woke up to the sound of her mother’s riyaaz. She was taking Bharatanatyam classes at age five.

She vividly recalls a calendar that hung in front of the landline phone at home, which featured works of the Italian Renaissance painter Sando Botticelli. At age seven, ringing up her mother after coming home from school, young Rao Hydari remembers taking in works such as Primavera and The Birth of Venus. “They were so fragile and beautiful, they got me intrigued about art,” she says. Another constant: A framed picture of the legendary Carnatic vocalist MS Subbulakshmi at her maternal grandmother’s house. A slow eater, Rao Hydari recalls looking at it as she finished her meals.

Art was easy, it was everywhere. It shaped her idea of what was beautiful, worth appreciating and worth looking at, she says.

Real deal

She’s aware of the term pretty-person privilege, of course. And the fact that she regularly features on lists of beautiful women. “I am grateful that people view me the way they do. But I don’t view myself as that anymore,” she says. Sure, the odd table reservation opens up for her in France, it lands her one more audition, or a stab at an advertising campaign. “But physical beauty only goes so far. And even there, there’s now a refreshing focus on authenticity, and an inclusion of different kinds of beautiful. Besides, as an actor, what matters is what you create with your skills.”

It’s why she’s much more thrilled that her 2023 clip, featuring her and her fiancé, actor Siddharth Suryanarayan, dancing to Tum Tum x Manike Mage went viral. “We self-recorded it in about five takes,” she recalls with a laugh. “Siddharth isn’t active on social media. People liked us together, which was nice to hear. Especially since we were just being us.”

Aditi’s fantasy five: Characters she wishes she played

Tiffany in Silver Linings Playbook (2012): “It’s such a layered love story and there’s so much to what she is doing at any one point in time. And Jennifer Lawrence plays her with great vulnerability.”

Rose in Titanic (1997): “Kate Winslet is fabulous in everything and anything; she’s just that skilled. But Titanic was iconic and set the tone for generations to come.”

Anna Karenina in Anna Karenina (2012): “A period drama I am partial to. I love Kiera Knightley in period dramas, which she does a lot of.”

Nina Sayers in Black Swan (2010): “She was believable as a top ballerina and as a young woman struggling with her confidence. I can’t imagine anyone else doing justice to this part.”

And of course, every role that Audrey Hepburn has played.

Sticker: The prettiest things in the world:

“The most beautiful thing and feeling in the world is love, of all kinds. And music. I love Western and Indian classical, and Tamil film songs,” says Hydari. She’s recently re-discovered the music of Ilaiyaraaja recently and likes the complex but catchy melodies. On her playlist: Shobha Gurtu, Kumar Gandharva, Ali Sethi, Abida Parveen and Mame Khan.

What we’ve loved Aditi in

Padmaavat (2018)

She stole the show as the gorgeous Malika-i-Jahan, or Mehrunisa, in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s period film, playing Alauddin Khilji’s wife.

Ajeeb Daastaans (2021)

Hydari, as a Brahmin data operator held her own firmly against Konkona Sen Sharma playing a Dalit worker in the Neeraj Ghaywan-directed Geeli Pucchi, one of the four mid-length episodes that comprise Ajeeb Daastaans.

Jubilee (2021)

She played Sumitra Kumari, a movie star’s wife with a flair for business and on her own journey towards love and desire

Heeramandi (2024)

Her character, a freedom fighter and courtesan Bibbojaan, emerged as a social media star after people started copying her on Reels, praising the way she walked.

Cameo Queen

Her special appearances in both Khoobsurat (2016), Fitoor (2014) and Sardar Ka Grandson (2021) have earned her lots of love online. In rom-com, Khoobsurat, she played Fawad Khan’s jilted yet sensible fiance; in the drama, Fitoor she played a young Tabu; and in the comedy Sardar Ka Grandson, she played a younger Neena Gupta.

Read Also: ‘Like a man beats a woman’: Kangana Ranaut reacts to ‘natural male’ boxer breaking opponent’s nose during Olympics