Priyanka Chopra has had a pretty turbulent year. On the professional front it was a mixed bag — while her international music career kicked off with hits like Exotic (feat. Pitbull) and In My City (feat Will I am), her film Zanjeer tanked, but her most recent release, Krrish 3 seems to have turned the tide in her favour. Personally of course, the actress lost her father to cancer, a loss she doesn't seem to have dealt with quite as well as she would have liked.

Just four days after his death Priyanka resumed work and said she did it as a distraction and nothing else.

"I don’t think it’s strength. I should have taken the time to deal with it. I wanted to run away from dealing with it and I did," Priyanka said to noted journalist Anupama Chopra on her show The Front Row.

Gallery: Priyanka on The Front Row with Anupama Chopra 

"I started work four days later, one, because my dad hated me sitting at home, and second, I would have lost my mind if I did."

"Losing my father was not just losing my dad, it was losing a part of me. My dad was my best friend, my idol and my protector. He was the man of my life, so I went back to work because that was my only solace and I haven’t stopped since," she added.

The episode airs tomorrow 8 November 2013 on Star World.

Talking about her music career the actress said, "Hopefully, in a few years, I will be the musician that my dad wanted me to be or that I want to be. Whether it’s In My City or whether it’s Exotic, for them to have done as well as they did, to hear it on the radio in LA, it’s very cool," she said.

The actress is used to quick feedback for films, but the music industry works at a different pace she feels.

"The way the music industry works, especially in the West, is that one single comes out, it develops, it bubbles, then another one comes out, it bubbles," she said and added that the process takes a year and a half before the release of an entire album.

"Whereas, I’m so used to movies, where we know on a Monday whether the movie is a hit or a flop," she said.

For the actress who has proved her mettle in films like Fashion, 7 Khoon Maaf and Barfi!, singing and acting are equally as important.

"I don’t know if I have a preference. I didn’t know anything about acting when I joined movies. I didn’t know it was an art, it was a craft." 

"It took me around four or five years to find the actor in myself. But music, I learned my alphabets singing. That’s how much it’s been a part of me," she said.

The actress gets around. As if her music and film commitments weren't enough, she seems to be doing her bit for charity too. 

She recently represented Girl Up, a campaign by the United Nations Foundation, at the annual Global Leadership Dinner.

"So proud to represent Girl Up at the UN global leaders gala... Met so many inspiring people who bring about so much change...Thank you," Priyanka said on Twitter.

The actress is one of the champions of Girl Up. Others, who are part of the programme, are filmmaker Nigel Barker and three-time Olympic medalist Rebecca Soni.

The initiative gives American girls an opportunity to channelise to raise awareness and funds for programs of the United Nations that will help some of the world's hardest-to-reach adolescent girls. 

Priyanka is also a goodwill ambassador for the UN Millennium Global Campaign.

On the film front, PC will next be seen in a scorching item number in the upcoming Ram-leela, in Aditya Chopra's Gunday (with Ranveer Singh and Arjun Kapoor), a biopic on boxer Mary Kom, and Zoya Akhtar's next in which she plays Ranveer Singh's sibling. 

Video: Ram Chahe Leela — Ram-leela