This year Dia Mirza Rekhi marks 25 years into films, and she does it with one of the busiest phases of her career. She recently had the release of Ikka with actors Sunny Deol and Akshaye Khanna, a cameo opposite actor Anil Kapoor in Alia Bhatt and Sharvari-starrer Alpha and now even a web series Operation Safed Sagar in the offing, which releases next month. While she gushes on the mention of the surge of work coming her way, it takes her back to the beginning of when it all began for her and reveals how it was Anil Kapoor who was actually responsible for her cinematic journey.
Event Context
“Anil Kapoor was responsible for convincing me to become a part of films,” the 44-year-old reveals, adding, “He met me right after my Asia Pacific pageant. He and Anupam Kher were very keen that I do the film that they were working on, and they were the ones who helped me get my first film. So, in a way, for good or bad AK is responsible for me being in films.”
Dia is also praise for her Ikka co-stars Sunny and Akshaye, and while she gushes over Sunny’s “unprecedented level of decency”, she also opens up on the work opportunity that couldn’t turn to reality with Akshaye. “I’ve done some films with his father (Vinod Khanna) and we shared a very special bond and even Rahul (Khanna, Akshaye’s brother) I have known. I’d actually approached Akshaye to act in a film that I was producing but that didn’t work out. So, it was cool to be in a film with him finally,” she shares, adding that while she enjoyed her scene with Akshaye, slapping him on screen terrified her. “I was terrified, and then Sunny sir was quick to jump in and say, ‘listen, you’re playing my wife, so you shouldn’t be scared’. And I was like, ‘Have you seen Khanna sahab’s fan following?’” she laughs.
Team Analysis
Calling their on screen team up in Alpha a beautiful moment, Dia Mirza Rekhi shares, “It felt like such a beautiful full circle moment to be in a movie with him 25 years on from the first time I met him outside in the lobby of a hotel in Hyderabad. I remember he had told me, “You are so beautiful, you have so much grace, you would be so beautiful on screen, you must become an actor’.”
