"I'm gonna tell you, there was not a single soul on the red carpet for Slumdog Millionaire. Not a single soul. Just a photographer and one person doing the interview," said Pinto, who came to the festival an unknown and left a rising star after the movie shot from obscurity to win the festival's audience award for favourite film on its way to Academy Awards triumph and box-office success.
"I was extremely nervous here about facing a million people for the first time... But things have changed dramatically since that time," Pinto said in an interview during her first return to the festival, where she had two movies playing, Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger and Julian Schnabel's Miral.
This time, photographers were awaiting her arrival at the Toronto airport, and she has been one of the festival's main draws alongside boyfriend Dev Patel, her Slumdog co-star. Pinto, 25, was raised in Mumbai and worked as a model and a TV travel show host before making her screen debut in Slumdog.
In December, she begins filming the Middle East oil drama Black Thirst.
