The firangi divas never had it so good in Bollywood. In Shoojit Sircar's "Madras Cafe" Nargis Fakhri, whose Hindi is still shaky (read: non-existent), conveniently plays a half-British journalist. Every single spoken line of hers is in English with Hindi subtitles for those who don't follow her global twang.
Now in "Jackpot The Full Jhol", Sunny goes a step further. She will speak her own Hindi lines. A full-fledged Hindi-Urdu tutor has been deployed for the purpose.
Director Kaizad Gustad smiles at memories of another firangi actress in his debut film "Boom". Kaizad had introduced Katrina Kaif in the film. Her Hindi then was non-existent. And her dialogues had to be dubbed.
Now Kaizad gets Sunny to be one-up on Katrina in "Jackpot".
"Sunny is the only female character in 'Jackpot'. And I hope to display her acting chops. We're reading the script every day. She will do her own Hindi dialogues. We're working on it every day.
"She is really one of the hardest-working actresses I've worked with. Just like Katrina. When Katrina came to Mumbai she didn't know a word of Hindi," Gustad said.
Sunny, who made her Bollywood debut with the 2012 film "Jism 2", seems mighty charged with the challenge of mastering the 'rashtra-bhasha'. She will also be seen in "Ragini MMS" sequel.
"I have learned all my Hindi lines for all my movies here. Even though 'Jism 2' was dubbed I still had to learn every single word. And in 'Ragini MMS' too I will be dubbing my own voice.
"It's very important to me to learn and work hard to get it right. I am extremely competitive so when someone tells me I can't do something like act, dance, express emotions on screen, or speak Hindi, all it makes me do is work harder to prove all those negative people wrong," she said.
"Jackpot" also stars Makarand Despande, who plays a funny twisted Konkani cop and Tamil star Bharath.
"It's basically a jhol (conflict) between Sachiin Joshi and Bharath with Sunny Leone pulling a fast one on them, and Naseer pulling a faster one. I am raring to finish. I've a lot of films to make. I am making three uninterrupted back-to-back films in the next one year," Gustad said.