By: Entertainment Desk Chennai | July 1, 2025 14:42 IST 3 min readPoonam Dhillon talks about working in Trishul. (Pic: Poonam/Instagram)Veteran actor Poonam Dhillon made her acting debut in the multi-starrer Trishul after filmmaker Yash Chopra spotted her in Chandigarh. But even at the young age of 16, Poonam had a strong sense of right and wrong and refused to wear an itsy-bitsy bikini during the filming of the song “Gapoochi Gapoochi Gum Gum” with Sachin Pilgaonkar.In a recent interaction with ANI, Poonam shared how she declined Yash Chopra’s request to wear the bikini and insisted that the makers provide a proper swimming costume. She said, “Yash Chopra said we are going to shoot a scene at the Oberoi hotel’s swimming pool. They bought some bikini for me, and I said I’m not going to wear that. Mrs Yash Chopra told me that ‘this little defiant girl, she just threw the bikini and said I won’t wear this.’ I asked her, ‘Did I do such a horrible thing?’ But she told me that I was very clear.”Despite Trishul being a dream debut for any newcomer—with a cast including Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjeev Kumar, and Shashi Kapoor—Poonam stood firm on her decision. She said, “I’ve been a swimmer from my childhood. I’ve been a swimmer up to state level. I was comfortable with swimming costume but that itsy-bitsy thing wasn’t comfortable, so I said I’ll wear a swimming costume. I’m comfortable with shorts because I used to do gymnastics in school but to suddenly wear this little thing…so finally, after much back-and-forth, they got me one full piece. Yash Chopra’s wife Pam ji used to tell me, ‘You were a little girl but you were so very sure of your mind.’ I don’t remember this at all. I can’t imagine me throwing something and say I won’t wear it.”Also read | Bollywood Golden Era star earned more than Dilip Kumar, said no to becoming Dev Anand’s wife, received Jawaharlal Nehru’s praise; only to quit films at 34During the same interaction, Poonam also recalled how Yash Chopra discovered her at a beauty pageant in Chandigarh and pursued her to act in his film. “He (Yash Chopra) hunted me from Chandigarh. He had to pursue me. He saw my picture somewhere, and that would have caught his eye. He approached some common friends of my parents and made the offer but my parents refused. They said, ‘Hamari family mein koi film mein nahin jata hai.’ There was a lot of resistance and unhappiness. My mother thought, ‘Hamari nak kat gayi.'”Poonam admitted that her parents eventually allowed her to work in films after they gained confidence in her.Click here to follow Screen Digital on YouTube and stay updated with the latest from the world of cinema.© IE Online Media Services Pvt LtdTags:Poonam Dhillon