One of the great mysteries surrounding Katrina Kaif is her name. Her passport says Katrina Turquotte. The story has always been that when she decided to try to make a career for herself in Bollywood she chose to use her Kashmiri father's last name, which was Kaif. But a profile of the actress appearing in today's Times of India says that "Kaif" was chosen for her out of thin air.
So what's going on? According to Ayesha Shroff, who produced Katrina Kaif's first film, Boom, Katrina is just an ordinary British girl, without any Indian background at all. When she met Kaizad Gustad (Boom's director) she apparently asked if she could work in India. Shroff and Gustad refuse to talk about how Kaif and Gustad met.
An identity was created for Katrina: "We gave her the Kashmiri father and thought of calling her Katrina Kazi. We thought we'd give her some kind of Indian ancestry, to connect with the audience" says Shroff. At the last minute Kazi was changed to Kaif.
Shroff is finally answering the question that so many have had about Katrina Kaif: Is she even Indian at all? It doesn't look it. Her Indian heritage is completely manufactured. Katrina's team didn't think a non-Indian actress could make it in the industry and so the need for this big ruse.
Katrina Kaif could barely speak Hindi when she started in the industry (her voice had to be dubbed in her first films and she still receives harsh criticism in regards to her grasp on the language). She has a very Anglicized look--while her hair is dark and she has a passably Indian profile, her skin is pale, and with a different hair color she certainly could pass as an ordinary English girl and not be thought to be Indian at all.
So apparently this is how India's biggest box office draw came to be: a manufactured name and a manufactured family history. Wonder if Katrina will ever come clean herself about her background? At the very least it'd give her a more believable excuse for her bad Hindi!