Jaitley turns prankster

MUMBAI, India - Bollywood actress Celina Jaitley played a practical joke on an unsuspecting New Zealand director by teaching him insults in Hindi language, a news report said Monday.

At a party during the recent filming of "Love Has No Languages" in New Zealand, Jaitley urged Kiwi director Ken Khan to greet Indian guests by saying: "Namaste, tera baap chor hain," or "Greetings, your father is a thief."

Khan fell for it.

"You should have seen the expression on the guests' faces when Ken actually said that to them. They were just stunned and did not know how to react," Jaitley told the Mumbai Mirror newspaper. "Of course, later I told the guests that it was a prank that I had played on him."

The movie about cross-cultural romance has Jaitley playing an Indian girl brought up in New Zealand who falls in love with Kiwi actor Ben Mitchell. The romance sets Jaitley on a collision course with her conservative parents who want her to marry an Indian.

Jaitley is among a growing number of Indian actors starring in overseas productions.

A beauty queen turned actress, Jaitley won the Miss India contest in 2001 and made her Bollywood debut two years later. She has since acted in more than 10 Hindi-language movies.