Imtiaz Ali’s Highway was a milestone in actress Alia Bhatt’s career but did you know that she was nowhere close to who the filmmaker envisioned as Veera? In a recent interview with Mid-day, Ali revealed that he imagined the movie’s lead as a mature woman but luckily changed his mind after meeting Alia. The seasoned director recalled meeting Bhatt during the screening of Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana and he hadn’t seen her debut movie by then.
Imtiaz revealed that he started talking to Alia Bhatt and felt some kind of warmth in her. “Emotional quotient was very high and I was very drawn to talk to her and she was talking very nicely, Ali said adding that when he talked to Alia about deeper things like home and society, the actress’ true voice started to come out.
He added, “I always wanted to cast a slightly elder, like a woman of at least 30. I didn’t want to cast a more mature woman who’s had experiences of the type that she was going to talk about in the film.” Imtiaz Ali said he never wanted a young person to pull off this character but after meeting Bhatt realized that he was only looking for emotional depth and the ‘young girl’ had it all.
This is when Imtiaz also admitted that the former Miss World could have been the Cinderella for his shoe. He said, “Aishwarya Rai without any makeup would be a great choice, but I didn’t approach anybody.”
The 53-year-old also looked back at the time when John Abraham was his first choice to play Jordan in Rockstar, a role that redefined Alia’s husband Ranbir Kapoor’s career. The filmmaker asserted, “There are certain things that don’t happen in life. So, you don’t know how it would be if it had happened. If John had done that film, would it have affected him in some way as an actor or would he have taken a different route, we don’t know.”
Rockstar released in 2011, was both commercial and critical success. The musical drama also starred Nargis Fakhri, Aditi Rao Hydari, Piyush Mishra, Shernaz Patel, Kumud Mishra, Sanjana Sanghi, Aakash Dahiya and Shammi Kapoor in key roles.
