TIL that former porn star Sunny Leone is now one of the most popular Bollywood actresses

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Outside, Mumbai’s roads and highways are dotted with giant billboards featuring Leone. Her face looms large over a snapshot of her television family, the actors that play her mother, father, and younger brother on her web series — Karenjit Kaur: The Untold Story of Sunny Leone, which recreates scenes from Leone’s life (Leone plays herself, except for in childhood scenes).

In 2011, Leone and Weber flew to Mumbai to join a reality television show called Bigg Boss (the Indian version of Big Brother) for a signing amount of $100,000. Leone was already looking to build her life after porn. She’d lost her parents; met, acted with, and produced a few porn films with her husband; completed her deal with the American pornographic film production company Vivid Entertainment; and was looking for a graceful exit — or, like several porn stars before her, an entry into the “mainstream.”

Leone’s closest parallel in Hollywood might be Sasha Grey, but unlike Grey, who was able to publicly champion adult films and defend her decision to join porn before she appeared on Entourage and then The Girlfriend Experience, Leone was shunned by the close-knit Indian community and her extended family in Canada, LA, and India. From that uneasy internet stardom, she was thrust straight onto a reality television show watched by 25 million people every night.

What happened next is part of Bollywood lore: Leone’s beauty, sweetness, and accented Hindi (so familiar to viewers with relatives who lived abroad), combined with visuals of her doing ordinary domestic chores like chopping vegetables, turned her into an all-Indian sweetheart. Comments about her “dark past” as a porn star only consolidated her position as an underdog and a fan favorite. Finally, a film producer and former disciple of Osho (the guru or “Bhagwan” from Netflix’s Wild Wild Country) appeared on set mid-season and offered Leone a Bollywood film. It was official: India couldn’t get enough of Sunny Leone.

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