Awards justify passion that we put in films: Deepika

By Nivedita

Madrid, June 26 (IANS) Actress Deepika Padukone, who received the Best Actor (Female) trophy at the 17th IIFA extravaganza for her performance in "Piku", says such honours justify the passion that goes in making of films.

Referring to Sanjay Leela Bhansali's directorial "Bajirao Mastani", Deepika told reporters at the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA) Awards green carpet on Saturday night here: "I think the film looked amazing and you as an audience can see that in every second of the movie. With the amount of passion these actors performed, it looked amazing. I feel, awards justify all the passion that we put in the project."

Is she teaming up with Bhansali again? "Why don't you ask him? He should have used the IIFA stage to announce it," she reponded.

While Deepika received the Best Actress award for "Piku", Ranveer Singh bagged the Best Actor trophy at the 17th IIFA extravaganza for his performance in "Bajirao Mastani". Bhansali won the Best Director for the film.

Apart from Bhansali and Ranveer's accolades, the film won Best Cinematography (Sudeep Chatterjee), Best Production Design (Saloni Dhatrak, Sriram Iyengar, Sujeet Sawant), Best Choreography (Remo D'souza for "Pinga"), Best Action (Shyam Kaushal) and Best Sound Design (Bishwadeep Chatterjee and Nihar Ranjal Samal).

There were more awards for the movie: Best Background Score (Sanchit Balhara), Best Special Effects (Prasad Sutar), Best Costume Designing (Anju Modi and Maxima Basu) and Best Song Engineer (Tanay Gajjar).

Deepika also gave scintillating performance to some of the songs from "Bajirao Maastani". She said she was very nervous before the awards night began.

"I am nervous and biting my nails," she said.

(The writer's trip is at the invitation of the IIFA organisers. Nivedita can be contacted at nivedita.s@ians.in)