Now You See Her

Now you see her An intimate portrayal of Katrina Kaif from her business acumen to incredible work ethicby her close friend of 10 years, director Kabir Khan

I was just finishing lunch when the phone rang. It was Adi (Aditya Chopra, filmmaker). “She’s here,” he said. I grabbed the keys and ran to my car. She was 15 minutes early. I drove like mad, hit a curbside, and the fender of my new car fell off. I looked at it and considered for a moment, fender or her? That was 2008, and when I look back, I secretly congratulate myself for choosing her, because today she is one of my closest friends in the industry.

Katrina and I grew together in the industry, in our own orbits but in support of each other. The beauty of our friendship is that we are allies. It is rare to have an actor who shares your vision and works hard to take it further. And there is nobody in this industry who is more hardworking than Katrina Kaif. Perhaps it stems from being an outsider? Her mother was an aid worker and they travelled all over the world. She grew up in Japan, Hong Kong, and Hungary among other places. The seven sisters are very close.

I think that because Katrina started from a place of not knowing anybody when she first came into the industry, she has worked that much harder to counter it all. For someone whose natural language is not Hindi, she not only learns her own script, but everybody else’s as well. She is one of the only actors today who still reads her scripts in Devanagari. And she has always been very athletic and works out like a monster, which is why I wanted her to do action in Ek Tha Tiger (2012) where she plays a spy. The work that she put into training was incredible.