Actress Kalki Koechlin is back on big screen with an offbeat movie ‘Shanghai’, which also stars Abhay Deol and Emraan Hashmi.

Playing her role in the movie wasn’t a cake walk for Kalki Koechlin as the director had asked her to look ugly yet adorable. The director, Dibakar Banerjee had just instructed her to ‘look ugly’.

“Dibakar wanted me to look ugly and vulnerable. The first thing that he did was chop my hair and make it really short. Then he gave me these clothes that were really grungy with jagged T-shirts and all. I wasn't allowed to look very comfortable or feminine,” said Kalki Koechlin to PTI.

“The idea was to bring on certain vulnerability and awkwardness to my character. There is not an ounce of glamour that I bring in 'Shanghai'. Dibakar said that I had to be ugly, but adorable. Now that was a strange mix I had to bring on screen,” she added.

Actress Kalki Koechlin isn’t new to playing troubled characters as she already played them before in ‘Dev-D’, ‘The Girl in Yellow Boots’ and ‘Shaitan’ but the actress said that it was difficult to play the troubled girl in ‘Shanghai’ as she had to enact a character of a complete outsider.

“Dibakar is presenting me as someone who is not an accepted person; she is an outsider. So basically everybody stares at her and people just think that she doesn't belong to their world,” she said.

Its not just Kalki but even Abhay Deol and Emraan Hashmi went through transformations for their roles. The director had asked Kalki to take inspiration from them for her role.

“Abhay is such a cool person in real life but here is shown as a stoic middle aged suited-booted character. Emraan has this paunch and blackened his teeth, which is a complete opposite of his romantic image. We were convinced by Dibakar's thought process and decided to take the plunge,” she concluded.

The movie Shanghai is set to release on June 8.