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(11 Sep 2017) INDIAN ACTRESS PRIYANKA CHOPRA TALKS ABOUT SUCCEEDING IN HOLLYWOOD AND HOW WE SHOULD ALL BE PROUD OF WHO WE AREIndian actress Priyanka Chopra says she is not afraid to fight against racial stereotyping in Hollywood.The star of American TV show "Quantico" also juggles her career in Indian film with movie roles in the U.S. including "Baywatch" and the upcoming "Isn't It Romantic," due out in 2019.But she admits she has been surprised to find how far Hollywood still has to go when it comes to diversity on screen."It's difficult for a woman of color. I did not realize how difficult it was until I started working in America," she said, Sunday (10 SEPT. 2017)"Especially an Asian woman of color, South Asian, that is me, there seems to be, there needs to be an explanation of why a South Asian, or an Indian, or someone who looks like me is cast in mainstream entertainment, but I don't think that that's a requirement because if you look around in America, or North America itself, it's a melting pot of all kinds of immigrants and cultures, so why should there have to be an explanation of an ethnicity anymore?""So I am hoping that with people like me and other people, other actors that are coming in from other parts of the world in global entertainment and if we dig our feet in and we say 'I don't want to only play the stereotype of what you expect me to be.' Only (mimics) 'I don't want to talk like this' you know? This is what a modern Indian girl speaks like and that is what I want to play," she insists. "So I mean, credit to my producers and filmmakers who have come to me with parts like that, but it's a fight, it's a battle, and I am not afraid to fight it."Speaking in Jordan, during a visit to Amman in her role as a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations child welfare agency UNICEF, the 35-year-old actress recalled how she fine-tuned her career in India, where she has been acting since the early 2000s."In India, when I first started my career, yes, I did get a lot of pretty girl roles, which is not wrong, but I'm an actor and I want to be able to act, that's my profession. So I took a conscious decision in creating parts for myself or looking for parts which would give me the ammunition of doing something which was substantial in a film. It's not about the quantity, it's about the quality, even if it's a few scenes but it's not a wallflower or a glamor, the glamorous effect in a movie, it actually should have a punch," she explained. Admitting she allowed society's views on skin tone to shape her view of herself as a teenager, Chopra adds it's important to encourage girls and women around the world to challenge general views of beauty."When I was a teenager, I was considered darker-toned, so in my head, I wasn't pretty and that's the ideology. Sometimes, I've see a lot of girls who are light-skinned in America say 'I am too pale, I am not pretty,' and it's like, why is this color of your skin a standard of beauty?""I think it's a problem around the world where the standard of beauty is whatever you don't have is what will make you beautiful. What?! What about everything else that God has given us?" she adds. "I think we need to bring our focus back on natural, we need to bring our focus back on finding the best version of yourself, instead of just doctors and beauty products that change who you are."Chopra met on Sunday with refugee children at a UNICEF-supported center for children in the capital of Amman, one of dozens across Jordan for refugees and locals.You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you... Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork

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