Dimple Kapadia

Dimple Kapadia was born on 8 June 1957 in Mumbai to wealthy parents and grew up there. She wanted to be an actress from a young age, and her father helped her get her first break in films. At 14, filmmaker Raj Kapoor noticed her and gave her the lead role in his teen romance *Bobby* (1973). The film was a huge hit and made her famous. Just before *Bobby* came out, she married actor Rajesh Khanna and stopped acting. The couple had two daughters, Twinkle and Rinke Khanna, who both acted briefly when they were younger. Kapadia returned to films in 1984, two years after separating from Khanna. Her comeback movie *Saagar* came out the following year and brought her career back to life. Both *Bobby* and *Saagar* won her Filmfare Awards for Best Actress. Over the next decade, she became one of the leading actresses in Hindi cinema.

Her early roles often played up her looks and sex appeal, but Kapadia wanted to push herself and try new things. She was one of the first actresses to star in Hindi action films centered on women, but critics liked her more when she took on dramatic roles in both mainstream movies and neorealist parallel cinema. She appeared in everything from marital dramas to literary adaptations, often playing troubled women that some saw as mirroring her own life. Her performances in *Kaash* (1987), *Drishti* (1990), *Lekin...* (1991), and *Rudaali* (1993) were widely praised. For playing a professional mourner in *Rudaali*, she won the National Film Award for Best Actress and a Filmfare Critics Award. She also had supporting roles in crime dramas like *Prahaar* (1991), *Angaar* (1992), *Gardish* (1993), and *Krantiveer* (1994), the last of which earned her another Filmfare Award.

From the mid-1990s onward, Kapadia became pickier about her projects, and her screen appearances grew less frequent. She got attention for playing middle-aged, complicated women who were courted by younger men in *Dil Chahta Hai* (2001) and the American film *Leela* (2002). Later leading roles included *Hum Kaun Hai?* (2004), *Pyaar Mein Twist* (2005), *Phir Kabhi* (2008), *Tum Milo Toh Sahi* (2010), and *What the Fish* (2013), but she found more success with character parts in *Being Cyrus* (2006), *Luck by Chance* (2009), *Dabangg* (2010), *Cocktail* (2012), and *Finding Fanny* (2014). The media noted that some of these roles broke away from how women her age were usually shown in Hindi films. More recently, roles in the Hollywood thriller *Tenet* (2020), the action film *Pathaan* (2023), and the streaming series *Saas, Bahu Aur Flamingo* (2023) brought her even more recognition.

**Background and personal life**

Dimple Kapadia was born on 8 June 1957 in Bombay to Gujarati businessman Chunibhai Kapadia and his wife Bitti, who went by "Betty." Chunibhai came from a wealthy Ismaili Khoja family whose members had "embraced Hinduism" while still seeing Aga Khan as their religious guide. Pakistani singer Faisal Kapadia was Chunibhai’s cousin. Bitti was a practicing Ismaili. When Dimple was a baby, Aga Khan III gave her the name Ameena, meaning "honest" or "trustworthy" in Arabic, though she was never called that. She is the oldest of four children; her siblings—sisters Simple (also an actress) and Reem, and a brother, Suhail—have all died. The family lived in the Bombay suburb of Santacruz, where Kapadia went to St Joseph’s Convent High School. She said she grew up fast and often made friends with older kids. Her father was cut off by his conservative family after she was cast in *Bobby* in 1971. At 15, she married actor Rajesh Khanna, then 30, after a short romance. A fan of Khanna, she later said marrying him was the "biggest high" of her life at that time. The wedding followed Arya Samaj rites at her father’s bungalow in Juhu on 27 March 1973, with a grand reception for thousands that evening—six months before *Bobby* came out. At her husband’s request, Kapadia quit acting after the marriage. She had two daughters, Twinkle (born 1974) and Rinke (born 1977).

Kapadia separated from Khanna in April 1982 and moved back to her parents’ house with her daughters. She returned to acting two years later. In a 1985 interview with *India Today*, she said, "The life and happiness in our house came to an end the day I and Rajesh got married," adding that her unhappy marriage involved inequality and her husband’s infidelity, calling it "a farce." The hostility between Khanna and Kapadia, who never officially divorced, softened over time; though they never got back together, they were seen at parties, and Kapadia acted opposite Khanna in his unreleased film *Jai Shiv Shankar* in 1990 and campaigned for his election to the Indian National Congress a year later. Their daughters also became actresses and retired after marrying. The older daughter, Twinkle, is married to actor Akshay Kumar. When *Filmfare* asked in 2000 if she would remarry, Kapadia said, "I’m very happy and content ... once was more than enough." Khanna fell ill in early 2012, and Kapadia stayed by his side, caring for him until his death on 18 July that year. She was with him when he died and said his loss, along with the deaths of her sister Simple and her brother, left her feeling "truly abandoned."

Kapadia loves art and has tried her hand at painting and sculpture. In 1998, she started a company called The Faraway Tree, which sells candles she designs. A candle enthusiast who finds making them therapeutic, she went to Wales and took a workshop with Blackwood-ba.