Refuses to eat food for three days on sets of 'Barfee'

Priyanka Chopra, it seems, is carrying her penchant for method acting as far as it can go.

For her previous roles in Ashutosh Gowariker's What's Your Raashee and Vishal Bhardwaj's Saat Khoon Maaf, Priyanka gained and lost weight so drastically that it affected her metabolism and health severely.

Now for Anurag Basu's Barfee, last week in Ooty, Priyanka has done an Anna Hazare, so to speak.

For a sequence that required her character to be locked away in a room for three days without food, water or any company, PC declared she would go the whole hog. No faking for the character, she declared.

Says a source, "At first Ranbir laughed off Priyanka's method acting. Tu Marlon Brando hai kya, the actor joked. He told her to 'just act' the sequence.

But PC was adamant. She made it very clear to Anurag that she would actually go through her character's ordeal for three days."

Getting conditional

All attempts to dissuade the actress failed and Anurag had to give in. However, the director had a condition, that he too, will join her.

Says a source, "To Anurag, who had written the character and the sequence, it seemed unfair that Priyanka should go at it alone.

He insisted on going through what the actress' character suffers when confined to a solitary life. Only then did Anurag allow Priyanka to go through the harrowing experience herself."

Significantly, both Anurag and Priyanka have health issues and could 'ill' afford the luxury of "living" their character's trauma. In fact, PC has earlier suffered two bouts of fatigue and nervous exhaustion, which put her in the hospital.

The Barfee experience of staying without food, water and company for three days has been serious pressure on the health of both the actress and the director. Priyanka, we are told, remained silent and unresponsive for a week after the shooting.

Says the source, "We all tried to dissuade both of them from this madness. But they wouldn't listen. First Anurag locked himself away in the room in Ooty that Priyanka's character was supposed to be confined in. And then she went through the three-day isolation."

The spokesperson for Barfee confirmed the above story.