Ashrita Shetty teams up with Siddharth, feels lucky

Debutante Ashrita Shetty considers herself extremely lucky to be cast opposite southern actor Siddharth Suryanarayan in her forthcoming Tamil thriller "Udhayam NH4".

"Every newcomer wishes to get launched with a successful star and I got lucky with that. I'm very happy that I got to work with Siddharth in the beginning of my career. He is very experienced and I got to learn a lot from him," Ashrita told IANS.

Touted to be a road movie, "Udhayam" also features Bollywood actor Kay Kay Menon as well as Deepak, Ajai, Kalai, Karthi and Avinash. It is directed by debutant Manimaran.

"I play Ritika, a very simple, young, soft spoken, naive college going girl who falls in love with the hero," said Ashrita, who forayed into films after winning the Times Fresh Face of the Year award 2011.

"I participated in Times Fresh Face contest and won the Mumbai level competition. Later, I also won the national level. I became the face of 'Clean & Clear' brand. Directors Vetrimaran sir and Mani Ratnam sir saw my advertisements and met me in Mumbai and finalised me for the film," she added.

Quiz her if she is intimated by growing competition in the industry and pat comes the reply, "I'm not thinking about all that right now. I just want to do good roles, work hard and give my hundred percent to all my films".

However, she admits facing camera for a mvoie is not easy.

"Facing the camera wasn't completely new for me as I have done TV commercials, but having said that, shooting for films is way different and difficult than shooting for ads," she added.

Ashrita has two Tamil projects in the pipeline.