You need guts for paranormal roles: Dipannita Sharma

Chennai, July 16 (IANS) Actress Dipannita Sharma, who stepped out of her comfort zone to play a ghost in "Pizza", says one needs guts to play a paranormal role because it's challenging. She says she had to scream her lungs out for her role.

"Pizza", which releases Friday, is the eponymous remake of a Tamil film.

"It's not every day that you get to play a paranormal role. Since I love watching horror films, I enjoyed playing the role of a ghost in the film. Even though I play an extended cameo, the role gave me an opportunity to break away from my comfort zone," Dipannita told IANS.

"It was equally challenging because I had to scream so much, make these scary facial expressions over and over again until the shot was locked. But what I really liked about my role and the film is that nothing is overdone in it," she added.

Dipannita was not allowed to watch the original because "My director wanted my approach towards the role to be fresh".

Directed by newcomer Akshay Akkineni, "Pizza" also features Akshay Oberoi, Parvathy Omanakuttan and Arunoday Singh in lead roles.

Working with a first-time director was "exciting" for Dipannita.

"It's so brave of Akshay to make his directorial debut with a horror film. He's extremely talented and working with him was exciting because both of us are fans of the horror genre. It made working so easy for us," she said.

Playing a ghost wasn't easy for Dipannita as it left her "physically exhausted".

"I went through some pain for the film. I remember being hung on the wall with a harness for hours. We had to shoot this scene many times because the blood on the wall would dry up quickly, they had to redo it to make it look authentic," she said.

While the purpose of a horror film is to scare the audiences, she says that the film's unit had lot of fun playing spooky pranks on each other.

"The spot boys would not come near me until the make-up was cleaned off my face. We had so much fun pulling pranks on each other," she said.

"Pizza", which releases in 3D, is jointly produced by Bejoy Nambiar and UTV Spotboy.