After trying her hand at production, former beauty queen and actor Dia Mirza is now exploring other aspects of cinema and wants to don the director’s hat in the near future.
The former Miss Asia-Pacific walked from the ramp to the arc lights in 2001 for Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein and after a decade as an actor, she moved into production with Love Breakups Zindagi. She has co-produced it with Zayed Khan and Sahil Sangha and is ready to serve it to the audience next month, on October 7.
“I think today I am at a whole new phase of my life and there is a lot that I have to look forward to. What I do believe in doing right now is doing everything with a lot of conviction and understanding,” Mirza, who plays the main lead in her debut production venture with Zayed, said in an interview.
“There are certain aspects of cinema that I want to explore. I want to get into direction as the next possibility. I will always continue to act. But I want to grow. I want to do more exciting things,” added the 29-year-old who believes in telling ‘simple and meaningful stories’.
She already has two stories in mind and says: “I want them to be engaging. I want to tell the story of heart and a story of resurrection — the resurrection of the human spirit. I have two ideas in mind that I am working on. They will be technically sound. I want to make them with very good actors,” she said.
Would Mirza act in her directorial venture? Her reply is that, “It would be way too difficult to direct and act in the same film. I have managed producing and acting pretty well, but it would be unreasonable for me to act in my own film. My main idea is to explore the mediums of cinema.”
In the last 10 years Mirza had more misses than hits; however, she enjoys acting as she finds it therapeutic. “Acting is a self-explanatory process that helps you to unravel yourself. It helps you literally dig into your own life and your own past. There are different characters demanding different aspects of emotional baggage that you create along your life journey,” said the actor known for her work in Tumsa Nahin Dekha, Deewaanapan, Parineeta, Dus and Lage Raho Munnabhai. But for now the actor is concentrating on Love Breakups Zindagi, a slice-of-life film made under her banner, Born Free Entertainment.
She ‘identifies’ with her character in the film and says, “In most ways, Naina is so me! I identify with her situations and a lot of her traits. She’s maternal, independent and finds beauty in other people’s happiness. But unlike me, she doesn’t believe in confrontations or doesn’t bother to listen to inner voice.”
Mirza has completed a decade in the industry but says she never imagined to be a superstar in Bollywood. “It’s amazing to look back, I was a girl from Hyderabad who set out herself free — but I was not sure about my aspirations. I didn’t know what my passions were at that time,” Mirza said, adding that she never “imagined I would be an actor”. “I grew to discover my love for acting. The last 10 years have been a drawing of experience from my strengths and weaknesses and from now on it starts afresh.”
Published in The Express Tribune, September 22nd, 2011.
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