Bollywood gossip: What`s cooking in filmdom

Actress Diya Mirza, known for her prim and proper image in films, is currently enjoying being bad in Suparn Verma's Acid Factory.

Diya is the only woman in the entire script and plays a girl locked up in a factory with four men with apparently no way out. She is being made to do the most impossible stunts, but the actress doesn't mind.

"What I enjoy is being one of the boys. I'm doing everything that the boys are being made to do. And that includes all the stunts," Diya reveals.

"After playing dainty, utterly feminine roles I'm enjoying being put on a harness, dangling from ropes, jumping from heights, kicking and punching. In spite of my dainty image, I've always been a tomboy," she added.

What Diya enjoys even more is being mean. "My character is bad through and through. No apologies. No justification. She just enjoys being bad. I like bringing that dark side of me out on screen because that's the way I can tap into it in real life.

"I like the surprise element in my role in Acid Factory. I remember seeing a film with Julia Roberts where she was a school teacher by day and quite naughty in the night," said Diya, who entered Bollywood with Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein opposite Madhavan.

Other than Acid Factory, Diya is also doing Shoojit Sircar's Shoebite. And she's just finished shooting with Amitabh Bachchan.

"Though we were co-stars in Shootout At Lokhandwala, we didn't have any scenes together. In Shoebite most of my vital scenes are with Mr Bachchan. And believe me, it was like going to acting school. He taught me one thing I'll never forget - 'To be a good actor you've to be a good listener'. I'm going to follow that mantra," says Diya.

She admits being an introvert and says it was little difficult to play an aggressive role.

"It was hard for me to come out and play the aggressive bad girl in Acid Factory or be part of the goofy comedy in Kunal Vijaykar's Fruit & Nut. I'm basically quiet and shy. I like to read and write."

Diya admits there's no man in her life. "The amount of men I'm linked with! Where's the time? Sometimes when I see my friends with their soul mates, I do wish I had someone to cuddle. But then I quickly move on to something else."