Katrina Kaif will have two releases in as many weeks and Akshay Kumar, who starts with her in Raj Kanwar's "Humko Deewana Kar Gaye", thinks she's shaping up to be a "major heroine".

But Katrina's relatively small walk-on part in Ram Gopal Varma's "Sarkar" and her full-fledged part in David Dhawan's "Maine Pyar Kyun Kiya" have one thing in common - she did not speak her own lines in both films.

Reason? Apparently Katrina's Hindi is a bit on the weaker side.

In fact, Varma had originally decided to retain Katrina's ultra-anglicised voice in keeping with her US-returned character in "Sarkar". But the Hindi spoken by the actress was way too outlandish to pass off as a non-resident Indian accent.

Hence the dubbed voice.

Now fans will have to wait longer to hear Katrina's real voice. Even in her second July release, she won't be speaking in her own voice.

Confirms David Dhawan: "We've got a professional dubbing artiste to do Katrina's voice. But it in no way takes away from her performance and beauty. Not that she can't speak the language.

"She's improving all the time...After a while I'm sure she'll have the confidence to dub her own lines. Didn't Sridevi start using her own voice only after doing many Hindi films?"

Dhawan has a point. Not speaking Hindi is no longer a deterrent to a career as a Hindi actor.

When John Abraham came to filmdom, he couldn't utter a word of Hindi. In fact there's a story about how a director ticked John off for trying to be a Bollywood actor without knowing the language.

Earlier, Sridevi's first dozen of so Hindi films were all dubbed by two professional artistes - Habiba and the late actress Naaz.

Sridevi worked on her Hindi and managed her own lines from Yash Chopra's "Chandni" onwards.

Bipasha Basu's first two performances in "Ajnabee" and "Raaz" were dubbed.

But do dubbed performances work? Lisa Ray, whose voice was dubbed by Divya Dutta in "Kasoor", couldn't make any headway. One hopes Katrina goes the Sridevi way and not the Lisa way.