Almost three years ago, Leone, then 29 and a major star with the Los Angeles adult-film juggernaut Vivid Entertainment, was invited to be on the reality-TV show Bigg Boss, India’s answer to Big Brother. The daughter of Sikh immigrants from Punjab whose marriage was arranged, she was well aware that porn was illegal in India and that the producers were simply courting ratings, so she initially declined. But the show’s parent company, Viacom India, countered with an offer that was too good to turn down. In 2012, a year following her Bigg Boss debut, “Sunny Leone” was the most Googled name in India.
Given her day job, there was a good chance that Leone could have become an instant pariah. Instead, she was offered roles in Bollywood films, an industry so prim by Western standards that for decades it discouraged onscreen kissing. Leone was baffled by this mainstream media embrace, but she went with it. She has since wrapped two feature movies and, with the exception of the occasional adult film she produces in Southern California, has left her porn stardom behind.
Today, sitting in a van parked amid the crowd, her makeup artist retouching her red lips and feline eyes, Leone is all cool confidence, unfazed by the rather stark contrast between the kind of acting she did in Southern California and the kind she is doing in Bollywood—by the fact that she now delivers lines with her clothes on, and in Hindi. “For me, it’s all just entertainment,” she says.