Deepika Padukone slammed as Kangana Ranaut says xXx star and her peers are 'NOT actors'

Ranaut was speaking to India Today in a sit-down interview when she was asked for her opinions on the biggest actresses in the industry right now.

The interviewer pointed to Deepika Padukone, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Anushka Sharma and Katrina Kaif as examples of Bollywood’s hottest female performers.

Ranaut, however, implied that they are more “supermodels” than actors – adding that fans and critics applaud them for doing very little.

Padukone is arguably the one who’ll be most familiar to Western audiences: she starred with Vin Diesel in xXx: Return of Xander Cage in 2017, and is rapidly building a global following.

Ranaut said: “Well I think most of my contemporaries are either like supermodels, or things like that.

“There’s nothing wrong with that – all over the world, there are actors and then there are stars.

“They are the stars, aren’t they – actors, there are many, but they’re not probably the stars.”

She added: “The ones you mentioned, they are not actors. They come under the category of stars.

“They do a [tiny bit] of acting, and everyone’s like [applauding] ‘oh, look, look, it happened there for one second!’”

Padukone, for one, has been showered with acclaim and awards over recent years.

To date she has three Filmfare Awards, three IIFA, two Producers Guild Film Awards, nine Screen Awards, three Stardust Awards and six Zee Cine Awards.

Ranaut too is no stranger to acclaim for the work she has done: she has three National Film Awards, four Filmfare Awards, three International Indian Film Academy Awards, and one award each from the Screen, Zee Cine and Producers Guild awards to her name.

She is currently promoting her new Hindi movie Judgementall Hai Kya, which is out in India next week.

Padukone, meanwhile, is hard at work on a variety of projects including 83 – about India’s cricket world cup victory – and Chhapaak, in which she plays an acid attack survivor.

Rumours that she is being lined up for a remake of Satte Pe Satta have not yet been confirmed.

She is also due to return for xXx for xXx 4, though there has been no news since the start of the year.