Slumdog Millionaire beauty Freida Pinto may be the new It girl in Hollywood these days, but she's not looking to relocate from her native India for the sunny glitz of Tinseltown anytime soon.
"I'm going to back to Bombay. I have a wonderful agent there," Pinto told me at yesterday's In Style and Diamond Information Center lunch in Beverly Hills. "But I'll probably be going back and forth."
Slumdog is Pinto's very first movie. And things are moving fast.
This week alone, her packed schedule included the Palm Springs International Film Festival, the Critics' Choice Awards, a CAA dinner tonight, a BAFTA tea party tomorrow and, of course, the Golden Globes on Sunday.
Oh, there's also a visit to Ellen DeGeneres. "I'm definitely going to get up there and dance with her," Pinto said.
She's also hoping a brief introduction to Clint Eastwood in Palm Springs could lead to some work with the moviemaking legend. "When I saw Million Dollar Baby, I said, 'I have to meet Clint Eastwood,' " Pinto remembered. "Then I finally got to meet him, and I got tongue-tied."
Speaking of getting tongue-tied in front of one's idol, Viola Davis couldn't even utter a single word after meeting Meryl Streep during the making of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams.
"I stared," Davis told me at the Critics' Choice Awards. "That's all I could do. I still have not told the woman how much she's inspired me as an actress. But I know she saw me staring, because she has eyes in the back of her head."
Don't forget that the Golden Globes are on Sunday. Pick your faves to win in the Prediction Poll in our fab Red Carpet section.