New Delhi: For actor and director Pooja Bhatt, the decision to end her marriage to her former husband Manish Makhija did not stem from conflict, but from the feeling of losing herself.
In a recent conversation with Vickey Lalwani, Bhatt opened up about her marriage, family, and personal struggles.
Bhatt tied the knot with VJ Manish Makhija in 2003 after the two met on the set of Paap. They stayed together for 11 years before the relationship fell apart in 2014. Announcing their separation, Bhatt, in a tweet, had said that their split was “amicable” and that they “hold each other in the highest esteem for now and forever”.
The split had caused buzz in Bollywood, with many speculating the reasons behind the separation. But appearing on Lalwani’s YouTube talk show, Bhatt has now clarified that she didn’t choose to part ways because she fell for someone else.
“A lot of my friends asked me, ‘You’ve been married for 11 years. Why are you ending the marriage? Is there someone else?’ The answer was no. There was nobody else. I wasn’t even thinking about another person,” Bhatt said.
The actor-filmmaker said she struggled with loneliness in the marriage and had lost herself as a woman.
“I ended my marriage because I felt lonely in that relationship. When you are living with someone and still feel alone, that relationship has stopped being a relationship. You slowly lose each other while living under the same roof. I told him that our relationship had begun with friendship and trust. I never looked over your shoulder and I never will. But I felt it was over. We had lost each other, and somewhere along the way, I had lost myself as a woman. I wanted myself back. It would have been a lie to continue the marriage, and I cannot live a lie,” said Bhatt.
Bhatt also reflected on the relationships of her father, Mahesh Bhatt, who ended his marriage with his first wife, Kiran Bhatt, before tying the knot with Soni Razdan in 1986.
Also read: Zohran Mamdani gifts New York kids bedtime TV. Signs mock order for Knicks game
Rise and return
Pooja Bhatt tasted success at a young age of 17, making her debut with her father’s film Daddy in 1989. She then delivered two blockbusters in 1991 — Sanjay Dutt’s Sadak and Aamir Khan’s Dil Hai Ke Manta Nahin — and appeared in more hits like Junnon (1992) and Border (1997)
By the time she turned 19, the actor had said in a 2023 interview with Siddharth Kanan, Bhatt was already a star. But the stardom was short-lived, as the industry declared that her career was over when she was just 24.
So, Bhatt left acting and decided to take up filmmaking. She launched her own production house at 25 and made National Award-winning films such as Tamanna (1997).
“Then I was producing and directing films, for 21 years I didn’t face the camera, I was behind the camera. I had accepted that the stardom phase is over and now you are in a new phase in your life when you’re making films,” Bhatt said during the interview.
While she played small roles in several films, the 2021 Netflix series Bombay Begums marked her comeback to acting. Directed by Alankrita Shrivastava, the show followed the lives of five ambitious women, where Bhatt played the CEO of a bank.