In her own niche

Back with Hum Tum Aur Ghost, Dia Mirza says romantic roles can do wonders to one's popularity index

Dia Mirza

Dia Mirza is on cloud nine. Not since her debut in the Madhavan and Saif-starrer Rehna Hai Tere Dil Mein has the girl been given a sweet romantic role to act in. But with Hum Tum Aur Ghost (HTAG), she makes a return to her niche. “I genuinely feel I am most suited to playing affectionate, warm and lovable characters. Sometimes, in our bid to get out of our slot, we tend to steer clear of them. On hindsight, I feel a romantic film can do much more for you in the popularity index than anything else. But God's timing is always right and here I am again,” she says happily.

Barring a few bright spots in her career, Dia has not had a great innings in the nine years she has spent in Bollywood, but she is optimistic about her next film with producer-actor Arshad Warsi. The film focusses on Armaan Suri, a professional photographer with a drinking problem but leading an otherwise perfect life. The twist in the tale is he begins to see and hear dead people. His perfect girlfriend (Dia) finds this difficult to digest and moves away. “The film is funny, mad and even dramatic in parts. As his girlfriend, I am quite concerned about what I think is hallucination. The film is very intelligently made and none of the characters are one-dimensional. Yet it is not complicated,” she adds.

HTAG took 45 days to shoot and was called

Kaun Bola? earlier. It boasts impressive special effects by Red Chillies, and Dia says one of the main reasons why the post-production took an uncommonly long time was that Arshad was very particular about the effects in the film. “He said if you can make out that a particular scene is created with special effects, then it really has no impact!” she says.

Working with a friend

Arshad and Dia come together in this one after working in Rajkumar Hirani's Lage Raho Munnabhai where they did not have a single interactive scene. “ Lage Raho… was a different experience altogether. We were there as mere artistes working with Raju. But in HTAG, it was a more wholesome experience. Arshad knew the script like the back of his hand. He is also a very good friend so we were working together on every aspect of filmmaking and I got to learn a lot. As a producer, he is uncompromising and my respect for him and the process of making films has increased a thousand fold,” she says.

Asked to comment on the stories linking her up with Arshad (who is married to Maria Gorretti and has two children), she says, “I have reached a stage where the media has linked me to every actor and if this is part of a publicity ploy, then Arshad and I don't agree with it. People who know us and even fans, who have a genuine perception of what kind of people we are, will not believe it. I don't have to explain my relationship with Arshad to anyone because what I share with him is something intense. You don't meet a lot of people with whom you can connect on the same basis as I do with Arshad. I know them (Arshad and Maria) for the past ten years and these two people have always believed in me and said that I have not been given my due. So, such stories don't spoil my relationship, I am okay.”