“She said ‘out of all the names, that’s the one you pick?’"
Sunny Leone has revealed the backstory of her stage name and admitted that her mother “hated” it.
Born Karenjit Kaur, she is best known as Sunny Leone.
Recalling the day she was given her name, she said:
“I was in the US doing an interview for a magazine and they said, ‘What do you want your name to be?’
“I couldn’t think of anything at that moment. I was working at a tax and retirement firm and I worked for the HR department, accounting department and another agent.
“I helped with all these things, and then I was also a receptionist.
“So, I was doing the interview in this place and I knew I had to get off the phone soon and get back to work because I would get caught.
“They were like ‘what would you like your name to be’ and I said ‘use Sunny as my first name, and then you can pick the last name’.”
She went on to reveal that her mother initially hated the name because it was the same as her brother’s nickname.
Sunny explained: “Sunny is my brother’s nickname. His name is Sandeep Singh, we call him Sunny. My mum hated that I named myself Sunny.
“She said ‘out of all the names, that’s the one you pick?’
“I was like, yeah, it’s just what came to my mind, and then the magazine picked the last name and I just kept it.”
Going on to speak about the surname ‘Leone’, she said that the name was given to her by the owner of a magazine by whom she had been interviewed.
She added:
“I was just 19, I got to know about this second name after it got published.”
Sunny started her career as an adult film star in the early 2000s and became a huge name within the industry.
She then retired from the industry and decided to make a mark in Bollywood, appearing in films such as Jism 2, Ragini MMS, Hate Story 2 and Ek Paheli Leela.
She appeared shortly in the reality show Bigg Boss in 2011 and very quickly became an overnight sensation.
Sunny is now readying herself for her next project Kennedy, with filmmaker Anurag Kashyap and actor Rahul Bhat.
She recently attended the film’s screening with Anurag at the Cannes Film Festival.
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