Sanjay Leela Bhansali didn’t know Sonam Kapoor was Anil Kapoor’s daughter at first, ‘got very upset’ when he found out

Sonam Kapoor completed 13 years in films on Monday; her debut film Saawariya released on this day in 2007. Before she was launched as the leading lady in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film, she worked with him as an assistant director.

During the promotions of The Zoya Factor, Sonam revealed how she told her mother Sunita Kapoor that she did not want to go to college but work with Sanjay. Sunita’s reaction was a resounding ‘no’.

Sonam then tried to convince her father Anil Kapoor, who had forgotten that Sanjay was Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s assistant during 1942: A Love Story, and was sceptical as he did not know the filmmaker personally. However, she convinced her father by saying that Ranbir Kapoor was also assisting on the film.

When Sonam first met Sanjay, he did not know she was Anil’s daughter, as her parents had ‘protected’ her from the media glare. “The first day I went to his office to meet him, I was sitting at a table. He just came back from church and he looked at me and he is like, ‘You have come for acting? Are you here for an audition?’ I said, ‘No, sir, I have come to be an assistant.’ He said, ‘But you should act, haan.’ I said okay,” she revealed to ETC Bollywood.

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Later, when Sanjay found out who Sonam was, he ‘got very upset’. “Then he found out who my father was and he got very upset. He was like, ‘Are you allowed...?’ I was 17 years old and bohot jhooth-voot bol ke (after lying a lot) I was there. But I got it on my own,” she said.

Sonam made her debut opposite Ranbir in Saawariya and though the film bombed at the box office, their careers took off. She has acted in a number of successful films, including Prem Ratan Dhan Paayo, Neerja, Veere Di Wedding and Pad Man.

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