Jamshedpur, May 30: A new face is all set to storm the Bollywood marquee.

Nothing prepared Jamshedpur girl Summan Mishra (24) for stardom. Growing up in her Kadma-Sonari Link Road middle class home in Jamshedpur, and studying in DBMS English School, and later, Motilal Nehru Public School, she wanted to be a doctor like her dad S.K. Mishra.

Today, Sumann — she likes to use her first name — is known as a sultry model who will be seen in A Game Called Relationship, a film directed by Vivek Sharma. Sharma had earlier directed the two biggest superstars of Bollywood — Big B and the Badshah — in Bhoothnath and is known for being the man who convinced the choosy Amitabh Bachchan to play a ghost.

Like many teens, Sumann left her hometown after Plus 2. She graduated from Sophia College for Women in Mumbai. That’s when the girl, a trained Kathak dancer and national-level athlete, was bitten by the glamour bug.

A shoot for an MTV promo with VJ Cyrus Sahukar changed her life. “After the MTV promo with Cyrus, things kept rolling. I thought, why not try modelling,” Sumann said from Mumbai, adding she trained to be an actor at Creating Characters.

She’s tight-lipped about her under-production project, but excited to be a part of Bollywood in the footsteps of other Jamshedpur stars — R. Madhavan, Tanushree Dutta, Simone Singh, et al. She has modelled for Debonair magazine, a jewellery range and apparels, among others. But she considers her debut film to be a stroke of luck.

“I just wanted to check out if I’d fit for any of Vivek Sharma’s projects. He told me the story of this film, and said he was looking for fresh faces,” said Sumann, also seen as a temptress in Channel V show Truth Love Cash.

She confesses she faced family restrictions about entering the glamour world and “being bold”. “But my confidence made me grow as a person. Today, my family is my biggest support,” she said.

Like any other youngster, she is nervous about her first film. “I am lucky to work with a director who has directed superstars. I’d like to work with Madhur Bhandarkar, Mahesh Bhatt and Anurag Kashyap,” Sumann said, adding she had to rush for a TV interview.

Her appointment diary is chock-a-block. Clearly, Sumann is in a hurry to make it big.


As published in The Telegraph of May 31, 2011