Zoya Akhtar

Zoya Akhtar Biography

Zoya Akhtar is a popular director of present times who gives less importance to commercial movies. She started her career with critically well acclaimed movie – Luck by chance in 2009 and in 2011 she created another magical movie – Zindagi na milegi dobara. She won her Filmfare Award for Best Director for this movie. She is the daughter of legend – Javed Akhtar, who is regarded as the most talented script writer of Bollywood along with Javed (Salman Khan’s father). He is the most successful lyricist of present times too. Zoya’s mother is Honey Irani, a successful screen writer of Bollywood and her brother, Farhan Akhtar too, is a versatile actor and director of present times popular with the movies like Dil chahta hai and Don Series of Shah Rukh Khan. Her step mother Shabana Azmi is the most talented actress of contemporary times who still holds the record of maximum National awards for best actor (both male and female combined). Similar to her father, she is an atheist.  


Zoya Akhtar was born on 14 October, 1972 in Mumbai. She is the granddaughter of Urdu poet Jan Nisar Akhtar. She completed her studies in Mumbai - Schooling at Maneckji Cooper and Bachelors of Arts degree at St. Xavier's College. Later, she joined the New York University Film School to learn film production. Her career started with the controversial movie – Kamasutra in 1997, where she played one of the disciples of Rekha. Then she went on working in television commercials as a model of which commercials of Pepsi and Finolex were noted. She has co-directed a music video called "Price of Bullets" for a rock band and also assisted her brother in the video shoot of super hit music video of Shankar Mahadevan – Breathless.

Her directorial debut Luck By Chance was praised by critics though it was a box office failure. Hrithik and Shah Rukh made guest appearances in this movie.  Her second movie – Zindagi milega na dobara was a roaring success at box office and it was appreciated by critics too. The movie included a big star cast of Hrithik Roshan, Abhay Deol, Farhan Akhtar, Katrina Kaif and Kalki Koechlin.

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Updated: June 12, 2018