Saroni Roy, Australian Actor, Keynote Speaker, Creative Consultant
A multi-hyphenate, Saroni Roy is an Australian actor, Keynote Speaker, Creative Consultant, PR & Media Relations professional, based in Sydney.
Podcast
Overview
Do you ever feel that you want to work for society but you don’t have enough in life? Or maybe God has given you less? Meet our guest for today, Miss Saroni Roy, who has been working for the community since her childhood. She says that it is in her DNA.
Saroni is an Australian actor, a keynote speaker, creative consultant, PR and Media consultant. She has also won the Miss India-Australia Goodwill Ambassador title. She is the creator and producer of ‘Ahinsa Peace Symposium – A tribute to Mahatma Gandhi’. She is the face of several international brands and she is the founder of the Saroni Roy Foundation.
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Saroni discussing handling different roles in her life
In Saroni’s opinion, three things that help her handle different roles in her life are extreme level of determination, organizational skills and time management skills. She also values time the most as she says it is an irreversible resource. She is always in urgency to do everything as she fears tomorrow might never come. To give us an idea of her time management skills, she tells us that she finalizes her schedule a year prior.
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Saroni’s role in supporting the bilateral trade relations between India and Australia
Saroni talks about how she participated and won the beauty pageant. She tells us that the judgement of the beauty pageant did not just depend on facial beauty, but what one did for society in the past was a major factor to win. Saroni proclaims that working for the society is in her DNA. Community work is something she has learnt from her parents. She recalls that her parents used to sacrifice their own comfort to add some value in others’ lives. Following their footsteps, Saroni has been doing various things. She talks about some of the prominent her initiatives; during the bushfires in Australia, she did a donation drive. The donation went to a community food pantry. With that donation, they were able to provide food to about one lakh people. She has a fat folder of her work to submit to the judges and they were aligned to India-Australia shared values. She says that there is a lot that both countries can learn from each other. She adds that Australia’s Indian diaspora number approximately is around seven lakhs.
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Saroni’s memorable roles on screen
Though all her roles are dear to her, she talks about a few that she admires the most. First she tells us about her role in a short film, ‘Faceless’ where she played Veronica. The movie talks about the mental health of men. Another role she talks about is from a web series. The name of her character is Tina. She is playing a detective in it.
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What goes into delivering a memorable performance in front of the camera?
Saroni talks about three major things an actor has to hold that makes a character alive on screen, they are authenticity, technique and preparation. She says even if it is a five minute scene, the preparation is equally important because there is a lot at stake. In her opinion, one does not get hired for being a good actor, but for being a reliable actor. We are also informed that unlike India, if you are not from a film school, you cannot be hired in Australia as an actor.
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Ahimsa Peace Symposium
Ahimsa Peace Symposium was the inaugural initiative of the Saroni Roy Foundation. Saroni has worked with numerous world peace initiatives in her life. After living in Australia for some time, she realized that people there did not know much about Mahatma Gandhi. She wanted to enlighten the world with the life of Mahatma Gandhi so they could understand peace and non-violence better and they could learn how to apply his teachings in daily life. She initially conceptualized it as a face to face event. Unfortunately, the pandemic hit the world and that could not happen. Hence, Saroni made it virtual and brought speakers from both India and Australia on the panel. This event turned out to be a huge success.
