Showing off a Bit Much

Showing off a Bit Much • News Break-up • Sixty and Still Not Done

Hungry for the kind of meaty, substantial roles that Bollywood isn’t offering them (understandably!), fellow door-knobs Dia Mirza and Zayed Khan recently launched their own production company, Born Free Entertainment. The first film to be rolled out of the company is a romantic-comedy titled Love, Breakups, Zindagi that stars both actors, and is being directed by Dia’s boyfriend Sahil Sangha, who is also a third partner in the company.

On the sets of the film, unit members have been complaining they have to put up with the sight of Zayed strolling about only in a shirt and his underwear. On some days, he’ll hang around outside his trailer doing push-ups in his tightie-whities, proudly showing off a physique he’s been slaving hard in the gym to maintain. A younger actor working on the film says Zayed can often be heard saying he has no inhibitions as an actor, and that’s the first lesson he learnt when he joined the movies! Wait, there’s more… Believe it or not, Zayed is said to have taken a few of the younger members of the cast under his wing, and is known to spend time in between shots explaining how to approach challenging scenes.

Desperate to revive his failing career, Zayed is also rumouredly working with another director on a script he intends to shape into a film that he hopes to convince brother-in-law Hrithik Roshan into starring with him in. So far, however, every project Zayed’s dad Sanjay Khan has tried to coax Hrithik into committing to, has failed to excite the Guzaarish star, who has allegedly demanded several rewrites before he can even consider signing on.

John Abraham and Bipasha Basu may be maintaining a tight-lipped silence on the subject, but sources close to the actors reveal that indeed rumours of a break-up between them are true. While some have blamed the split on Bipasha’s growing friendship with her Dum Maaro Dum co-star Rana Dagubatti, the general consensus seems to be that John is in no mood to get married and make babies.

Reportedly, it didn’t help their already delicate relationship that John recently appeared on Koffee With Karan where he spoke candidly of his ‘bed-breaking skills’ and admitted (in jest, albeit) that his Bandra bachelor pad is a ‘toll naaka’ of sorts where few women have been allowed to enter or leave without ‘paying the requisite toll’. Bipasha was allegedly humiliated by her boyfriend’s jokes, which she saw as the final nail in the coffin of their relationship.

There is, however, yet another popular story doing the rounds, and this one’s possibly the most embarrassing. Some industrywalas seem to believe that these break-up rumours between John and Bipasha are part of a carefully-orchestrated campaign being run by the couple themselves, allegedly still very much together but looking for a fresh burst of attention to keep them in the news.

She’s Bollywood’s most glamorous diva, and although she’s almost 60, she doesn’t want to be told she’s too old to romance the hero! This much-loved female star who continues to dress like she’s 30, turned down a role opposite Tamil cinema’s legendary superstar last week because she wasn’t comfortable playing her age.

The film is reportedly an ambitious project that sees the Southern star play a triple role opposite three different actresses. Uncomfortable and entirely unwilling to play the character paired opposite the oldest of the actor’s three avatars, Madame declined the offer. Although her representatives are saying she dropped out of the project because she wasn’t thrilled with the fee she was offered, word on the street is that she simply couldn’t wrap her head around the fact that she’d be playing the eldest of the three female parts in the film.

The actress was apparently further bothered by the fact that the producers had already signed a promising young 20-year-old leading lady to star opposite the youngest avatar of the male actor. The diva was in no mood for comparisons with a younger actress, and promptly asked to be let off the film.

It hardly took the producers four days to replace the diva with another senior actress who’s well into her 60s and has no qualms playing her age.

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Rajeev Masand

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