ELLE Digital Cover: Rakul Preet Singh On Being Grateful, Grounded And Glowing.

It’s 5:05 a.m., and the ELLE x Rakul Preet Singh Whatsapp shoot group is already buzzing. “Rakul is ready,” her manager texts. The fashion, art, and bookings teams — half awake, fully adrenalised — are on their way to her suite at 1 Hotel Melbourne, overlooking the Yarra River as the city skyline wakes beyond. By 5:30 a.m., fittings are done.

I’m still groggy from a 1 a.m. landing. “She’s ready?” I type back. “Yes. Hair and makeup in fifteen.”

That’s Rakul Preet Singh for you — punctuality wrapped in grace. By the time I’m out of bed, the tone for the entire week is set. The shoot, spread across Melbourne, unspools like an editorial dream — fast, playful, tightly run. At NGV International, standing in front of Yayoi Kusama’s giant pumpkin installation, for the first shot of the day, she’s instantly magnetic. Tourists hover, phones are out, security watches. She doesn’t flinch. One look at the camera and she locks in: poised, luminous, fully present. Three bursts later, we’ve got it. “Where next?” she grins. That’s the thing about Singh — she doesn’t pause. She moves.

Later that evening at Gimlet, Melbourne’s kind of old-world, martini-and-tile institution, she’s softer, almost conspiratorial. She sits with her manager and the Visit Victoria team, ready to share everyone’s food. “Jackky and I love ordering everything on the menu and sharing,” she laughs, naming her husband, producer-actor Jackky Bhagnani. “That’s our thing.” She’s one of those people who makes dinner feel like you’ve known her for years, not hours.

When you talk to her about where that comes from — the ease, the absolute lack of chaos in a job built on chaos — she doesn’t romanticise it. She just says, “I grew up in an army home.” Then she explains what that actually means. “Discipline wasn’t taught to us — it was just life. Exercise, outdoor time, balance… it was normal. I’ve never seen my parents skip a morning workout. Even now, if my dad doesn’t go for his walk, I ask if he’s okay.”

That foundation didn’t just teach her punctuality. It taught her perspective. “When you’ve watched your father serve on the border and you can’t reach him because there were no phones then, you learn what really matters,” she says. “So now, when people talk about the noise — social media, insecurity, hate — I honestly don’t get affected. Material things don’t define me. I know who I am.”

She describes herself as “Indian, fully,” because she never belonged to just one place. “People ask, ‘Are you from Delhi or Mumbai?’ I can’t answer that. I’ve lived in the Northeast, in Jammu, in the South. I’m Indian. Truly. That’s how I was raised — patriotic, grounded, adaptable. You move every few years, you adjust, you learn to live with new people. You grow up with no boundaries around language or culture. That helps in this industry more than people realise.”

That adaptability became the spine of her work ethic. “When I set out to join the industry at 18, from a non-film background, I knew this: some people were better looking than me, some were more talented than me, but no one would work harder than me. My work is worship,” she says, steady and unashamedly earnest. “If I’ve said 4 p.m., it’s 4 p.m. If I’ve said hair and makeup is 1.5 hours, it will be 1.5 hours. I don’t know any other way.”

That discipline was tested, recently, by a back injury that left her almost immobile. For nearly a year, she travelled with a physio: shoots, flights, promotions, recovery work. “Even in Melbourne, after a 14-hour day, I’d go swim or do my rehab. I’d tell the team, ‘Leave me in the evening, I need one hour.’ Because this is about longevity. I’m not here for a moment.”

That idea of longevity shows up in smaller, almost throwaway details. She talks about how she’s basically stopped wearing heels. “In the last year, I’ve learned so much about how women’s bodies are constantly tilted forward in heels,” she says. “It’s terrible for you, but we still call it a fashion rule. Why? Who decided pain is aspirational?” She grins. “I’ve done carpets in flats and I’ve never felt powerless. Honestly, we should normalise that.”

It’s interesting — for someone who arrives in full glamour at 5:30 a.m., she does not project diva. She calls herself “very normal.” “People assume actors have this otherworldly life,” she tells me. “But I’m just trying to be a good daughter, a good partner, a good friend, a good actor. That’s it. The rest is an extension. I’m clumsy. I’m tomboyish. I hate two-hour glam. On my off days, you’ll never catch me dressed up because I need to switch off.” Then, without irony: “Also, I love my sleep. My sanity is non-negotiable.”

That grounding has also shaped the way she holds her relationships — especially her marriage. When she talks about Jackky, her face softens in that way people’s faces do when they’re describing home, not spectacle. “We didn’t have to learn how to align,” she says. “We were already aligned. Our food habits, our values, our way of thinking — it was almost freaky. Love is great, of course, but I think the core of a good relationship is friendship. We respect each other’s individuality, we’re each other’s biggest cheerleaders, and we don’t overthink the public part. We’re just two people who are very happy to be together and to see each other grow.”

Growth is a word she returns to again and again. Sometimes it’s physical. Sometimes it’s spiritual. Around 2015, in the middle of a relentless work run — “I was literally working 350 days a year in Telugu cinema,” she says — she hit a wall of self-doubt. “You want things to go a certain way, you’re doing a million things, and you just get overwhelmed.” Instead of spiralling, she picked up a book. Then another. Then another. “I re-read ‘The Secret’ and it just landed differently. It became like a therapist at that time. Then I delved into more spiritual reading — ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’, ‘The Power of Now’, ‘You Can Heal Your Life’ — and I realised something: we all have this innate strength. The work is figuring out how to access it.”

That work, she says, is why she’s not easily shaken anymore. “I know what actually gives me joy. I know who my people are. I have a tiny circle — great friends, great family — and that keeps me grounded. I’ll give up anything that disturbs my sanity. I won’t give up my sanity for anything.” She smiles. “That clarity is freedom.”

It also informs how she runs her set and how she expects to be on other people’s sets. Her long-term team (her assistant has been with her 12 years; her hair and makeup team for seven) talk about her with almost protective affection. She shrugs it off, but not disrespectfully. “There’s no ‘rule’ for how to treat your team,” she says. “Just be human. You spend more time with them than with your family. You respect their time, and you treat them the way you want to be treated. Why would I call my assistant at 7 a.m. and then stroll in at 8? He also deserves sleep. It’s basic humanity. And that applies to everyone — staff, crew, co-stars, friends. Everyone deserves to be considered.”

The conversation eventually circles back to work and where she is now. She’s in an interesting place: she’s done big commercial films; she’s worked across multiple industries; she’s had true pan-India visibility. So what does she want next?

“Balance,” she says. “I want to do commercial films, yes, but with parts that have soul. I’ve done the ornamental roles. I don’t want to just be the girl who shows up for four scenes and four songs. I want to play women with an arc — whether she’s a sharply dressed urban girl driving the story forward or a rooted small-town character fighting her own battle.”

Then she laughs. “Having said that, if Shah Rukh Khan calls and it’s four scenes and four songs, I’ll do it. Obviously.” She’s practical, not performative. “Sometimes you do a film because of the maker you want to work with. Sometimes it’s the co-actor. Sometimes it’s the part. I don’t want to box myself. Put me on screen with no makeup in a raw, realistic story — great. Give me glam — also great. I just want longevity. I don’t want to be defined by age.”

That instinct to engage with complicated stories without apology is part of why audiences connected so strongly to her in ‘De De Pyaar De’, a film that hinged on a taboo: a younger woman in love with an older man. She’ll return to that world in ‘De De Pyaar De 2’. “I won’t reveal much because it’s not out yet,” she says, smiling. “But for me, Ayesha has always been a girl of today. She knows what she wants. It’s not about ‘sugar daddy’ stereotypes or shock value. It’s about meaningful love, partnership, and choice. People will always have opinions on age gaps in relationships. That’s fine. The film is entertainment. But at Ayesha’s core, she’s sorted. She’s not frivolous.”

Before we wrap, I ask her to define the phase she’s in right now — personally, professionally, spiritually. She thinks for a moment. “I don’t really believe in chapters,” she says finally. “I think every day you turn a new page. You’re always unfolding some new part of yourself — your work, your relationships, your body, your limits.” She smiles, and for a second, you see both the athlete and the romantic. “If I had to put it in a phrase? Grateful, and striving for more. I’m very grateful for the people in my life. And I’m still hungry. That hasn’t changed.”

It’s close to midnight by then in Melbourne. Call time the next morning — technically the same morning — is brutal. She gets up anyway.

Of course she does.

Team Credits:

Editorial Director: Ainee Nizami Ahmedi; Photographer: Jedd Cooney; Fashion Director: Zoha Castelino; Asst. Art Director: Alekha Chugani; Makeup: Salim Sayed; Hair: Aliya Shaik; Jr. Bookings Editor: Anushka Patil; Assisted by: Idris Nidham (styling), Sharayu Karalkar (bookings); Production: The Artline; Artist Reputation Management: Spice PR; Location Partner: Visit Melbourne; Airline Partner: Malaysia Airlines.