In this exclusive conversation at the 79th Festival de Cannes, Anupama Chopra sits down with Alia Bhatt — actor, producer, and L'Oréal Paris global ambassador, now in her second year representing the brand at Cannes. Alia reflects on the learnings from her debut Cannes outing last year and her conscious effort this time to find calm within the chaos — arriving a day early, slowing down, and making space for real conversation. She opens up about the shifting landscape for women in film, pointing to the global success of Barbie, Wuthering Heights, and The Devil Wears Prada 2 as evidence that female-led storytelling is commercially powerful, and pushes back on the long-standing Indian industry assumption that movies must cater primarily to male audiences. Alia also speaks about the L'Oréal Paris Lights on Women's Worth program in its sixth edition, and what platforms like it mean for young women, including her own daughter one day. Alia traces the origins of her production house Eternal Sunshine Productions, the formative advice from her father that pushed her toward producing Darlings, and her excitement around the upcoming Prime Video romantic comedy Don't Be Shy, directed by debutant Sreeti Mukerji and launching four fresh faces from outside the film industry. Across her 14-year career, Alia has worked with some of Indian cinema's most distinctive filmmakers — Imtiaz Ali, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, S. S. Rajamouli, Karan Johar, Gauri Shinde, Abhishek Chaubey, Vasan Bala, and Shiv Rawail, among others — and she calls herself, unequivocally, a director's actor. She talks about why surrendering to the director's vision is central to her process, why she believes the actor-director relationship must be built on mutual love, and why the tender care she received from her directors early in her career still stays with her. She also reveals her enduring shyness in social settings, the joy of getting starstruck (most recently meeting Viola Davis), and the beauty essential she swears by above all else — sleep.