Abid, Bollywood Trade News Network

Yash Raj's NEW YORK is fast emerging as the first universal success of the year and a lot of credit has been attributed to its lead actress Katrina Kaif, who after a long time (NAMASTEY LONDON), has received all round accolades for her brilliant performance. Even the superb start, despite some subdued but intelligent publicity, has been credited to the numero-uno actress, the beautiful Katty Baby, because the lead actors John Abraham and Neil Nitin Mukesh are not known (in the trade circle) for giving great start to their projects .

Naturally Katrina Kaif is on cloud nine. However, it may come as a surprise to many that it took Kabir Khan, the director of NEW YORK a lot of time and persuasion to convince Katrina to sign on the dotted line. The reason being that Katrina was under the impression that the film would turn out to be a boring documentary about 9/11 and its aftermath, and she did not believe in doing documentary films. But the director told her that she would definitely relate to the film, because of its love story, drama and emotions, which would appeal to the general public, as they would have undergone similar emotions in reality. And also the true to life drama that unfolds in the second half is very believable and identifiable.

Well, certainly all that Kabir Khan said has turned out to be true. People have related to the film in a big way and given NEW YORK the thumbs up and confirmed Katrina as the reigning queen of Bollywood!