Preity Zinta has a confession that will sound familiar to anyone who's ever cringed at their own voicemail. She doesn't watch her films once they're done. Not because she isn't proud of the work, but because sitting through her own performance makes her uneasy.

"I can never judge myself on screen," she said in a conversation with Hindustan Times. "Once my movie is done, I don't watch it. I feel very awkward sitting through. It's not like I don't want to watch, but I cannot." She added that the habit brings its own kind of self-criticism. "I find myself thinking: I could have done this better."

Zinta was speaking ahead of the release of her upcoming action comedy, her second project since she returned to Hindi cinema, and the film that marks the acting debut of Vanshika Dhir. Dhir, sitting alongside her in the same interview, admitted she's still getting used to seeing her own face on a poster.

"I didn't expect to see myself on the poster. I am just happy I made it there," Dhir said. "At the trailer launch, when I saw myself on the big screen, I could not believe it. I had some kind of impostor syndrome. I feel that feeling is going to stay for quite a while."

Zinta agreed that the discomfort doesn't necessarily fade with experience, even after close to three decades and more than 50 films to her name.

The film gives her a proper action outing too. She plays Madam H, a spy who pulls two regular guys, played by Kunal Kemmu and Sparsh Shrivastava, into a covert operation. Zinta says she pushed to do her own stunts wherever the production would let her.

"It's always a negotiation. I am falling off the steps. But I wanted to do most of it," she said. "There is somebody who is paid to do this, and you can't take their job away from them. But hats off to all the action team that was working. We are just the front. And yes, I got kicked, I got punched. I never thought that would happen."

She called the finished product deceptively smooth. "When you see everything on film, it's so much more exciting. When you do it, it's so technical."

The cast rounds out with Dinesh Lal Yadav and Yashpal Sharma, and Sharmila Tagore turns up in a cameo. The film opens in cinemas on September 18, which puts Zinta right back in the middle of a year that's already had her fielding questions about Batwara 1947's box office run. Whether audiences take to Madam H the way they did to her earlier comeback outing is the thing to watch for next Friday.