Eight years ago we first saw Preity Zinta in her debut “Dil Se” Now the actress wants to eradicate the image that has made her famous, fearing her characters will become caricatures.

"I'm sick of it. I'm sick of being bubbly. I'm sick of being talkative and I'm sick of being cute," said Preity, her trademark smile missing, but her dimples making a fleeting appearance.

"That image has stuck with me," she said in an interview. "I mean, you evolve, you know?"

The actress is hoping her role in Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna, due for release later this year, will help her establish a new public image.

The film has been getting a lot of attention in the Indian film industry, mainly because of the star-studded cast. Along with Preity, Amitabh Bachchan, Shah Rukh Khan, Rani Mukherjee and Abhishek Bachchan appear. Little has been said about the plot, only revealing that it's about relationships and marriages not being as perfect as they appear.

Preity said she plays a "very ambitious magazine editor."

Choosing roles that go against the traditional has become Preity’s reputation, often smiling her way through them. In 2000, She played an unwed mother in Kya Kehna! In the 2005 blockbuster Salaam Namaste , she portrayed a woman who moved in with her boyfriend before getting married and there by defied her family and traditions.

"I always look for something interesting," she said during the interview.

She never planned to be an actress and stumbled into Indian cinema when she was spotted in a soap advertisement a well-known filmmaker while she was studying for a postgraduate degree in criminal psychology Preity said.

Insisting the ad was just for fun, Preity said, "I never thought I'd be an actor - ever," she recalled. "I had never gone to film school or done a dance class."

Trial and error has been her teachers as she's learned on the job while appearing in over twenty films. Meanwhile, she has become one of the top actresses in India. However, she says it was her role in the mob trial and the loss of friends during the tsunami in December 2004 that has given her a sense of perspective.

As a star witness at the 2003 trial of a movie financier, Bharat Shah, she testified concerning threats she had received from a gangster police though was tied to Shah. Police suspected Shah had links to Mumbai’s underworld nexus.

Fearing reprisal from gangsters, several other films stars who were allegedly threatened as well, retracted their statements to police. Preity’s testimony, which was supposed to remain confidential, was on front pages across the country when word of the testimony leaked.

Ultimately, Shah was found guilty of withholding information concerning the underworld, but not of being directly linked to the mob.

Meanwhile, under police protection, Preity was forced to remain out of the public spotlight for close to two months. "My life was a living hell," she said. "I think I aged 10 years then."

In 2004, she was asleep in a beachside villa in Thailand when the killer waves hit shore. She says she still remembers being the thundering noise wakening her as the water smashing everything around her.

She ran, there by surviving. However, her friends who had travelled with her did not make it out. Understandably, it’s something she does not like to talk about.

"The people I went with were some friends I had grown up with. I'd known them all my life," she said before changing the subject.

"It really made me think about why everybody around me went and I didn't," Preity said as she covering her eyes.

Preity says since that fateful day she's taken life slower. As an example, she made only one film last year, rather than working at the breakneck pace most Indian cinema stars accommodate.

"I'm more grounded now. I've started doing fewer films. I've started meditating," said Preity. "I want to live my today because I may not have a tomorrow.”