Aditya Chopra

Some Lesser Known Facts About Aditya Chopra

• Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Aditya Chopra is the elder son of late filmmaker Yash Chopra and singer Pamela Chopra.

• Young Aditya was not only a bright student during his school days but also an avid sportsperson. He was a passionate football player and even dreamt of becoming one some day.

• The likes of Karan Johar, Abhishek Kapoor and Anil Thadani were his classmates during his college years.

• Walking in the footsteps of his father, Aditya took-up filmmaking at the age of 18. As an assistant director, he helped his father on various ‘projects’ like Chandni (1989), Lamhe (1991) and Darr (1993).

• Aaina (1993) was his only “Non-YashRaj” movie as an assistant director.

• After gaining 5-years of experience as an assistant director, Aditya Chopra made his full-fledged directorial debut with Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Much to his surprise, the movie emerged a huge blockbuster and is still considered as one of the most iconic films in Bollywood. Notably, a single screen theatre in Mumbai had screened the movie for 1000 consecutive weeks (20 years) until 2015.

• After DDLJ’s incredible success, Aditya took a break from direction and mostly worked as a script and dialogue writer for his father’s films. He returned to direction after a gap of 5 years, with the Amitabh Bachchan–Shah Rukh Khan starrer Mohabbatein (2000). The movie also marked the launch of his brother, Uday Chopra, in the Hindi film industry.

• An introvert by nature, Aditya Chopra likes to stay away from the media attention irrespective of the performance of his movies. Owing to his lack of public appearances, you will find only a handful of his pictures on the internet. His shyness has also been associated with the severe Anti-Social personality disorder that he developed during his childhood years.

•  The year 2004 is perhaps the best year of his career, according to him. He produced a total of 3 movies in the year, namely Hum Tum, Veer-Zaara and Dhoom. All 3 of them managed to become commercial blockbusters, accumulating more than INR 200 crore in the global market.

• He again took to direction in 2008 and came up with Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, which marked Anushka Sharma’s dream debut, opposite Shah Rukh Khan.

• ‘Adi’, as his loved ones call him, has a penchant for number 21, his date of birth. He got married to Rani Mukerji (born ’21’ March) on the ’21’st of April.

• Aditya made his return to direction yet again in 2016, after a gap of 8 years, with Ranveer Singh starrer Befikre. However, this time luck was not on his side as the movie fell flat on its face, both commercially and critically.