Lisa on a comeback!

Lisa Ray is only too happy to be imbued with literary antecedents. After all she wants to be a novelist. But for now, she would have to be content being an actress. After her critically-acclaimed performance in Water, the controversial lesbian film I Can’t Think Straight, and the action thriller Kill Kill Faster, Lisa is working with Deepa Mehta again in the comedy Stella. The film began shooting hush-hush in Delhi on a start-to-finish stretch this week. This is Lisa’s comeback to India after the steamy Qasoor in 2001 where she shared more than just screen space with her co-star Aftab Shivdasani. Her inability to speak Hindi was one of the reasons why she made no headway in Bollywood and returned to her home base in Canada. In Qasoor, Lisa’s lines were dubbed by Divya Dutta. And while many eyebrows were raised when Deepa cast the sophisticated model-turned-acrtress in Water, Lisa did brave through her poetic Hindi dialogues in the Oscar-nominated film. But her lines had to be eventually dubbed. Said Deepa, "Stella is my third film with Lisa. She did the light and frothy Bollywood/Hollywood for me with Rahul Khanna in 2002. I know people thought I had gone mad when I cast her in Water. But Lisa got tremendous acclaim in the world press. In Stella, she’s perfectly cast as a 32-year-old Indian-Canadian in Delhi. So she’s a natural choice for the part." Lisa’s co-stars in Stella are the Canadian TV phenomenon Scott Speedman and the NRI Punjabi theatre-actor Vajendra (Rocky) who makes his screen debut as Preity Zinta’s husband in Deepa’s Punjabi film Heaven On Earth. Interestingly, Lisa who so far featured in pivotal parts in all her films, doesn’t play the main protagonist in Stella. The title role is played by Seema Biswas. Stella is a bilingual in Hindi and English. If Lisa’s Hindi lines are dubbed, will she at least do the English dialogues? Or would we hear her character speak in two different voices?