/> Long in the queue, Diya Mirza seems to be finally emerging from the shadows. Her performance in Apoorva Lakhia's Shoot-out At Lokhandwala as the deglamorized no-nonsense news reporter, modeled on Minty Tejpal who had covered the real encounter at Lokhandwala 20 years ago, fetched her rave reports.

It's Diya's first film shorn of all makeup. " Shoot Out At Lokhandwala is the kind of cinema that I believe in. I played a serious socially aware woman who doesn't want to attract attention to her physicality.

She's a woman in a man's world. She wants her work to be the focus of her personality. Unfortunately we actors cannot hope for such invisibility in our profession. But I'm trying."

To brace herself for the more realistic phase in her career Diya went to the US to sharpen her acting skills. "I was in New York to do a seven-day workshop in acting at the New York University. It's very important for every actor to renew and refurbish her skills. "

Before Diya it was Manisha Koirala who had run off to the US to do a course in cinema.

She returned to play a pivotal character in Sanjay Gupta's Alibaug. "A lot of the situations are from the director's own life. That element of realism has crept into my life. I need to sharpen my skills in that particular form of acting. Hence New York, here I come."