Dia speaks out...

A look at these pictures and there’s no denying that Dia Mirza is beautiful. Her grace and gentleness make her an almost perfect fit for any celluloid expression. At 20-something, she has the confidence and clarity of thought that mostly come with experience. At the same time, Dia has an innocence and naivety that make her look vulnerable.
Right now Dia seems to be caught in a web of controversies.She’s in the midst of not just one but two of them! Rumours are rife that she is the reason for the tiff between producer Sanjay Gupta and director Apoorva Lakhia of the Shootout at Lokhandwala. Without losing her composure, she brushes it off. “Sanjay and Apoorva are good friends on and off the sets. And both are my dear friends.” She says she’s enjoyed shooting for the film, in which, she is playing a journalist.
The other story doing the rounds is that Dia and Rakhi Sawant had a spat on a TV show, and the former was miffed with the item girl because of her constant “bak bak” and generalised comments on Bollywood. Did an angry Rakhi really say that Dia had had a face job done? Dia laughs and explains, “Well it was a talk show on a news channel. I may be soft spoken but I have my opinions, and I do speak my mind where necessary. Anyway, the show organisers would have thrown me out if I had sat through it without reacting to anything! But I must say, no personal remarks were made. It was a generalised opinion. I don’t believe in cat fights or arguing behind the sets, because people are entitled to their opinions. They can have them!” The grown up woman today can sway many a cynic, surely.
Controversies apart, Dia’s career is going great guns. “I am at ease now. Apart from Shootout at Lokhandwala, I am awaiting the release of Cash on 15 July. Then there’s Bits and Pieces and Das Kahaniyan, which will be released later this year. The shooting of two films Ali Baag and Krazy Four is going on too.”
So will she not consider Tollywood then? “Earlier, I was not mentally prepared. While I got some interesting offers, I was busy with Bollywood projects. And when I had the time, nothing interesting came by,” she clarifies. For now though, Hyderabadis will get to see their beloved star in the last week of May. “I will be in Hyderabad for a dance show and I am quite excited about performing in my hometown.” In the midst of all this churn, Dia has discovered her talent with the paint brush too. And that’s not surprising for people who know her because she comes from an artistically inclined family and went to a school that nurtured creativity. Her father, a German, was a fine sculptor. “Before I came to Bollywood, I used to paint. Since a year and half, I’ve taken it up again, as my career is on track now. Painting is a fine expression of perceptions and emotions.” Like friend Salman Khan, she too, is holding an exhibition of her paintings titled Reflection of Mumbai. And what does she paint? Life, of course.