The magnificent bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty is playing the lead role in one of the Indo-Chinese movie projects "The Desire" to be directed by a national award winning director R. Sarath.

The movie, "The Desire" deals with the sensibilities and emotions of women with the central theme running on dance, music art and culture. Shilpa Shetty plays the role of a dancer named Gautami, while Jaya Prada the actress-turned-MP dons the role of Shilpa's mother & dance guru. To give a realistic performance Shilpa Shetty is taking lessons in Odissi dance. Xia Yu, a well-known Chinese actor is said to be playing the male lead role in "The Desire".

Shilpa Shetty, the 2007 winner of UK's Big Brother reality show is finding difficulty speaking English with an accent. She says, "This is also the first time I did dialogues in English and so did Xia Yu. Both Xia Yu and I made such an effort not to speak the English language with an accent. Not as easy as I thought it would be, when you are so used to saying dialogues in Hindi. But all’s well that ends well. I am happy I got to do this too."

The "Desire" is being produced by both Sharad Hegde and Tracy Shiyun. The other star cast includes Anupam Kher, Sachin Khedekar, Sheetal Menon and Nakul Vaid and music is by double Oscar winner A R Rahman.