- Wednesday, May 01, 2024
The Hollywood star on Monday attended the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa with her actor husband Michael Douglas.
By: Mohnish Singh
She has seen it multiple times, her son has watched it, and his school friends too… Catherine Zeta-Jones says Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Om Shanti Om is one of her favourite films along with The Lunch Box.
The Hollywood star on Monday attended the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) in Goa with her actor husband Michael Douglas, who receives the Satyajit Ray Lifetime Achievement Award at the closing ceremony of the festival on Tuesday.
Zeta-Jones is also a fan of Ritesh Batra’s epistolary romance The Lunchbox, starring the late Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, and Nawazuddin Siddiqui.
“I have always been a huge fan of Bollywood and being a singer and a dancer, I dreamt (that) maybe the British film industry would do the Bollywood type of films and I would be able to be cast,” she told reporters here.
The actor said she showed her son Om Shanti Om which is one of her favourite movies. “And when his (sons) kid friends came over, he is like, ‘You want to see a movie from India, it’s my mom’s favorite movie’. We love it and we watched it many times.”
Zeta-Jones said if she had to do a film in India, she would love to feature in a movie like The Lunchbox, which is one of her “favourite movies of all times”.
The Mask of Zoro star said she came across the movie during a long international flight. “I watched it twice back-to-back,” she recalled.
The actor, 54, said she met the director of the movie when he was in London.
“I am still waiting for him to write me another Lunch Box. I am a big fan of that movie. It touched me in a sense of being such a quintessential Indian movie, it just touched me as a European woman so much,” she added.
Talking about her presence in India for IFFI, the actor said, “India is very dear to our hearts. We have been here a few times and we have just been welcomed with such open arms, actually.” The actor also narrated a personal story of how an Indian doctor saved her life when she was just 18 months old.
“India has touched me in a very serious, personal way… It was an Indian doctor who saved my life through tracheotomy when I was 18 months old. So, I wonder why, when I come to India, I have this feeling of coming home and this is like tingly feeling and maybe there’s something to do with that,” she said, recalling how she became breathless due to a virus.
“The reason why I am actually here is because of the brilliance of an Indian doctor in Swansea, South Wales in the UK. So forever indebted to him,” said the actor, who has a visible scar on the front of her neck from the procedure.
