Dia Mirza reveals why she took her step-father’s last name before Miss India pageant in 2000: ‘We had a beautiful relationship…’

In an interview with Bollywood Hungama, Dia talked about changing her surname from Hendrich to Mirza. Calling her step-father Ahmed Mirza a ‘remarkable man’, she explained that the values he imparted on her held her ‘in good stead’. “We had a very beautiful relationship that started off as friendship. Then I think as I grew older and I recognised that I had spent more years of my life with him, and him as a parent, he just became more and more my father, and that’s why I took on his surname when I joined the Miss India pageant,” she said.

Frank Hendrich died when Dia was nine years old, and Dia recalled how Ahmed Mirza never tried to take her father’s place in her life. “Unfortunately, I lost him as well, when I was 23, and that was a huge, huge, huge loss because I think whatever said and done, the security blanket that a father figure gives you in life, nobody else can. When you lose a father that young, and I had lost two fathers within one lifetime, it’s very hard,” she said.

Dia married Vaibhav Rekhi in February 2021, and the couple welcomed their son, Avyaan Rekhi, in May 2021. Vaibhav already had a daughter Samaira from his previous marriage, and she shares a close relationship with Dia. Dia was last seen in Anubhav Sinha’s Thappad, which featured Taapsee Pannu in the lead role.