Sonalee Kulkarni set to make her Bollywood debut

Sonalee Kulkarni set to make her Bollywood debut

 Sonalee Kulkarni, best known as the Apsara Aali girl from the Marathi film Natrang, enters Bollywood with Grand Masti, opposite Riteish Deshmukh. And she's not to be confused with Sonali Kulkarni, who played Saif Ali Khan's heroine in Dil Chahta Hai.

Sonalee's B-Town debut happened due to her Marathi film Ajintha — a period love story. The movie's posters were put up across Mumbai and one of them happened to be outside producer-director Indra Kumar's office in Andheri.

"Induji started enquiring about me and soon realised that I'm the girl from Natrang. He contacted me and asked if I'd be interested in doing his film," recalls Kulkarni, who didn't have to audition for the part. That her co-star Riteish had also watched her Marathi movie helped. As Sonalee says, "Riteish praised my work and they felt that I was perfect for the role in their film."

Having seen the filmmaker's movies like Dil, Beta and Ishq, she says, "It was a dream come true to work with someone like Induji, someone I've looked up to through his films," In the movie, she plays Riteish's wife who has time for everything else but him.

Sonalee has already established herself as an actress to reckon with in Marathi cinema. She has won the Maharashtra state award for best debut for Bakula Namdev Ghotale. And her last Marathi release, Zapatlela 2, the first 3D film in the language, also became a hit. Currently, the actress isn't in a hurry to sign up for her next role, preferring to await the release of her Bollywood debut, scheduled to release on September 13. "This is the sequel of a successful film like Masti, so I'm looking forward to its release and presently concentrating only on my first Hindi film," she concludes.