Dimple Kapadia almost did not do Dil Chahta Hai. In an interview with Vogue, the actor revealed she was hesitant to play Tara, an older woman who falls in love with a younger guy, in Farhan Akhtar's 2001 seminal directorial debut Dil Chahta Hai. Who convinced her to do so eventually? Her co-star Akshaye Khanna.

What Dimple said

“I find every excuse not to do a film. Anything, I have to find the excuse. So even for this (Dil Chahta Hai), I was like, ‘No no no, I am not doing it.’ And Akshaye Khanna called me up. He was such a sweetheart. He said, ‘Please, please, do it for me.’ And yeah, I said, of course. And thank god I did it because working with Zoya (Akhtar) and working with that team was completely… I think by this time, it was a different kind of generation I was working with. So it was very, very rewarding. And it helped me a lot there,” Dimple said.

Zoya Akhtar, Farhan's sister, served as an Assistant Director on Dil Chahta Hai. She went on to make her directorial debut eight years later in 2009 with Luck By Chance, which also starred Dimple in a pivotal role. She played a yesteryear actor who's now mentoring her daughter (Isha Sharvani) to enter the movies. Dimple and the Akhtars go a long way back as she also starred in Ramesh Sippy's 1985 romantic drama Saagar, which was written by Zoya and Farhan's father Javed Akhtar. In fact, even Dimple and Akshaye's father Vinod Khanna have shared screen space in a host of movies, from Mukul Anand's 1987 action thriller Insaaf to most recently, Abhinav Kashyap's 2010 cop drama Dabangg.

About Dil Chahta Hai

Dil Chahta Hai marked the directorial debut of Farhan and was the first film made under his and Ritesh Sidhwani's production house Excel Entertainment. It also starred Aamir Khan, Preity Zinta, Saif Ali Khan, and Sonali Kulkarni among others. 

Dimple will be next seen in the film Go Noni Go, whereas Akshaye will play Aurangzeb in Chhaava.

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