Neetu Kapoor is back to doing what she loves best — acting. The actor has returned to the arc lights after a long sabbatical and says the experience helped her regain her balance after husband Rishi Kapoor’s death in 2020. The actor will be seen in JugJugg Jeeyo, which releases this Friday.
As Neetu promotes her upcoming film, which revolves around love, marriage, divorce, and everything in between, she is revisiting her memories of her marriage and family ties. In this interview, Neetu candidly opens up about Rishi, her mother-in-law Krishna Raj Kapoor, and how her son Ranbir Kapoor is balancing his relationships after wedding with Alia Bhatt.
About why she decided to get back to acting after nine years, Neetu says, “Once an actor, always an actor. But, you need a lot of confidence, which I had lost in the interim because I had not worked for so long. Then I lost my husband… When I started shooting the film, I didn’t have it. But now I think I am confident, I can do it and I’ll now keep doing more work.”
About facing her insecurities, Neetu said, “When we were half way through the movie, I’d tell a friend that it is not my cup of tea, I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to go on set, I was so stressed. Now, however, I feel much better and I want to do more work. It is all about confidence, and I am gaining it back.”Acting means more to Neetu now than it ever did; it is her way of coping with her husband’s death. She shares, “It keeps you busy, it is like a job. Acting is my occupation. What else can I do, I am all alone. Nobody lives with me, both my children are married. So, what do I do? I’d be very sad thinking about my past and my husband. So, I decided that it is better to be busy, kaam karte raho, dil behel jaataa hai. So, it is a good thing.”When she was asked how she manages to be so candid and full of life even after coming out of a tumultuous phase in her personal life, she says, “Maybe because I am a positive person. I don’t know the reason, it is just the way I am. My husband used to tell me how he felt that I was a very normal human being. He’d say, ‘there is no air about you. No show.’ He used to have very very beautiful girlfriends but he left them all (for me). So I used to ask him why he left them, to which he’d say, ‘woh apne mein hi lagi rehti hai. But you’re very normal, I like normal people’.”Neetu was at the peak of her career and all of 22 when she tied the knot with Rishi and gave it all up. “I don’t know how I did it, himmat aa jaati hai. Maybe it was my love for their family, my love for him. From childhood, I just knew Rishi Kapoor. I was 14 when he came in my life, so after someone being a part of your life for so long, they become your own person, so you want to do everything ke woh thik ho jaaye. When he (Rishi) had to go, he did, but you want everything to be okay. I think basically you just have to love that person. I say this quite often, if you love your husband, you love his family; if you don’t like their family that means you don’t love your husband. And, I have a relationship with every member of my family, like his sister Reema is my best-friend. My niece Natasha, she is my best friend, they love me more than they love Chintu mama. So, you have to build your relationship. I feel if you love that person you have to make that effort to love everybody.”
