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Indian director Mira Nair says Hollywood's Johnny Depp is down to earth



PhotoBy AP
Friday February 2, 12:55 PM
Renowned Indian director Mira Nair said Hollywood actor Johnny Depp is a humble soul with none of the trappings of stardom, a report said Friday.

Depp is to play the lead in Nair's new movie "Shantaram" about an Australian fugitive on the run who arrives in Mumbai, sets up a free clinic in a shanty and works for the city's crime bosses.

"For all the stratospheric box-office status he's a humble soul. He's generally inquisitive about the world," Nair told The Mumbai Mirror newspaper. "He considers 'Shantaram' his bible."

Nair believes she was picked by producers Warner Brothers because of her knowledge of India's financial capital Mumbai, where the film will be shot. She did not give any dates on when filming would begin.

"It's set in my beloved city of Mumbai. "Shantaram" is set in the 1980s Mumbai at a time when I was in the city," she said. "I guess it was my love for Mumbai city, my knowledge of the script and their fondness for my work that clinched the matter."

The movie is based on a best-selling book by Gregory David Roberts drawn from his experiences when he escaped from an Australian high-security prison in 1980 and later fled to Mumbai where he worked for a mafia boss.

Nair, who splits her time between homes in New York, New Delhi and Kampala, Uganda, has directed "Vanity Fair," "Monsoon Wedding," "Mississippi Masala" and "Salaam Bombay!"

Her latest movie "The Namesake" is based on a novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning Indian-born American author Jhumpa Lahiri about an Indian family's assimilation into American culture.