“Getting Hrithik Was Quite Easy” : Says Zoya Akhtar

Zoya Akhtar, whose directorial debut Luck By Chance is a refreshing take on Bollywood’s manipulations and double-standards, says she virtually had to knock on all the big doors of filmdom for casting someone in the lead role, but no one agreed.

“It doesn’t help to be this one’s daughter and that one’s brother. Farhan’s name got me access to the stars, but no one does a film for who has sent you, ” Zoya, daughter of well-known lyricist Javed Akhtar told.

“The hardest part was the endless waiting to find the actor. I was dying to get behind the camera. My producer Ritesh Sidhwani kept telling me not to get low, we’ll find the right guy. Little did we realise that the right guy was sitting in the room with us, ” she said of her director-actor brother Farhan Akhtar.

Although Hrithik is a star, signing him on for the cameo wasn’t so difficult for the debutant director.

“He plays a star named Zafar Khan. Getting him was quite easy. I was working with him in another film ‘Kismat Talkies’. And when that got delayed, I went back to the one that I wanted to do earlier. He liked ‘Luck By Chance’ too and wanted to play Zafar Khan. His song is a homage to all item songs in Bollywood. Source