On Wednesday, Dimple Kapadia turns 65 years old. Let’s think back to when she told Tenet about her time working with the director Christopher Nolan. Dimple said in an old interview that Christopher, who is very secretive about his movie scripts, told her about it inside a locked-up make-up van.
Christopher Nolan is best known for his big-budget, high-concept movies like The Dark Knight series, The Prestige, Inception, and Interstellar. When he cast Dimple in the 2020 movie, which was partly filmed in Mumbai, he made a lot of noise.
In a 2020 interview with iambirmingham.co.uk, Dimple was asked how Christopher showed her the script. She said, “I was locked up in a make-up van, and it took me about 4 hours to read it.” For the first 50 pages, I had no idea what the hell was going on. I didn’t learn much more in the rest of the book, but I read a lot and still couldn’t figure out what was going on. Then I looked at my lines of dialogue and they were so long I had a heart attack, and I can’t remember them.”
She said, “So I did something sneaky: I took my phone and took pictures of just my lines. When Andy Thomson, the Associate Producer, came, I gave him the script and told him, “Listen, I’ve taken pictures of my lines,” and he said, “You can’t do that.” So I told him, “You have to give it to me because I forgot everything.” I said, “I’m being honest with you and telling you that I need this. Without it, I can’t deliver really, really, really long lines.” Thank God I had that with me, so I could work, because the whole shoot is just one shot. He took one picture of the whole scene, so it was a speech.”
In the spy thriller Tenet, made by Warner Bros., John David Washington, Dimple, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh, Aaron Taylor Johnson, and Clemence Poesy all played important roles. In the movie, Dimple played an Indian woman named Priya who sold weapons.
Bobby, which came out in 1973, was Dimple’s first movie. It was with the late Rishi Kapoor. She went on to be in movies like Kaash (1987), Drishti (1990), Lekin (1991), Rudaali (1993), Gardish (1993), Krantiveer (1994), Dil Chahta Hai (2001), Leela (2002), Phir Kabhi (2008), Tum Mil Toh Sahi (2010), and What the Fish (2011). (2013). She was also in Being Cyrus (2006), Luck by Chance (2009), Dabangg (2010), Cocktail (2012), Finding Fanny (2014), and many more.