Priyanka Chopra had the room’s full attention in Los Angeles on Thursday, October 15, as she received the Woman of Impact Award at the third annual InStyle Imagemaker Awards — and used her moment to reflect, with unusual candor, on the shy girl she used to be and the quality that carried her from there to here.
Asked what her younger self would be most surprised by, Chopra Jonas, 44, did not reach for the obvious answers — not the fame, not the filmography, not the global life. “She wouldn’t believe it,” Chopra said of her younger self. “I never thought this happens to everyday people.” And the trait that would surprise that girl most? “My will to survive, my tenacity.”
An Award Presented by the Generation She Inspired
The honor was presented by three younger performers of South Asian heritage — Avantika Vandanapu, Amita Rao and Megan Suri — in a piece of casting that functioned as the evening’s thesis. Suri, in her remarks, delivered the line that quickly became the night’s most shared summary of Chopra’s place in the culture: “For many Indian women, she is not the exception, but the entire example of not only how high we should dare to dream but also how much we can achieve.”
Chopra, for her part, seemed determined to complicate any myth of effortless ascent. She described her younger self as “really shy and introverted” — a self-portrait at odds with two decades of red carpets, and a useful reminder that the confidence audiences associate with her was built rather than born.
(Bollywood Hungama / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0))A Star-Studded Room
The Imagemaker Awards, now in their third year, honor the people who construct celebrity images — the stylists and glam artists — alongside the stars whose looks define the era. Thursday’s honorees included stylists Chris Horan and Law Roach, and the guest list read like a cross-section of current pop culture: Charli xcx, Megan Thee Stallion and Heidi Klum were among the attendees celebrating in Los Angeles.
The choice of an award presenter trio for Chopra’s honor underlined what distinguishes the Woman of Impact Award from a standard career trophy. This was not only a celebration of what Chopra has done; it was a demonstration, standing on the stage beside her, of what her career has made imaginable for others. Three careers, in part, exist downstream of hers — and the ceremony made sure everyone in the room noticed the arithmetic.
(Bollywood Hungama / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0))From Everyday Person to Global Example
Chopra’s biography has by now a familiar silhouette: a small-town Indian upbringing, a Miss World crown at 18, Bollywood superstardom, then the improbable second act in Hollywood that made her a global superstar in the literal sense — famous, simultaneously, in the world’s two largest film cultures. Layered over the acting is a second career of advocacy, including years of work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.
The ordinariness is not false modesty so much as autobiography. Chopra grew up largely in Bareilly, in a family of doctors, spent part of her schooling in the United States being bullied for her accent, and entered the Miss India pageant almost on a lark — her mother entered her, by her oft-told account, while the family was thinking about something else entirely. The crown rerouted everything. Keeping that origin audible, in rooms full of couture, is a deliberate act: it tells the next everyday person in the audience that the distance is real but crossable, because she has personally crossed all of it.
Yet her remarks on Thursday kept returning to ordinariness. “I never thought this happens to everyday people,” she said — a line that lands differently from a woman whom Suri had just called “the entire example.” The tension between those two descriptions, the everyday girl and the generational example, is the story Chopra has spent 25 years living inside, and the reason an award with the word “impact” in its title fits her better than one with the word “icon.”
(Bollywood Hungama / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0))The Imagemaker Awards at Three Years Old
For a ceremony only three editions old, the Imagemaker Awards have found their voice quickly. Where older shows honor the performance, InStyle’s night honors the presentation — and, in Chopra’s case, the person whose presentation changed what an entire demographic believed was available to it. Industry guests described Thursday’s edition as the franchise’s most confident yet: a tight room, a clear theme, and honorees whose selections argued with each other productively. The stylists being celebrated build images for a living; the Woman of Impact honoree built one that escaped the frame entirely and started directing other people’s ambitions. Putting those achievements on the same stage is the ceremony’s founding idea, and this year it clicked into place with unusual neatness.
A Career of Firsts, Still Compounding
The record behind the honor is long enough to summarize only in milestones. First South Asian to headline an American network drama. A National Film Award in India and a Padma Shri, one of the country’s highest civilian honors. A production company making films in multiple Indian languages. A memoir, Unfinished, that became a bestseller by refusing the usual celebrity varnish. Each first was followed, pointedly, by seconds and thirds — other actresses cast, other stories greenlit — which is the difference between a pioneer and a precedent. Thursday’s award, presented by three women whose careers are among those seconds and thirds, recognized the precedent. The room understood. The applause, witnesses said, had a particular quality to it: less like admiration, more like gratitude with good tailoring.
What Comes Next
Thursday’s ceremony closed with Chopra honored, the presenters applauded, and the image-makers — the stylists and artists the night was built for — duly celebrated alongside the face they and their predecessors have spent decades dressing. If the evening had a single takeaway, Suri had already provided it from the stage. The example is set. The dreaming, by the look of the three women who handed over the trophy, is well under way.