Pakistani actress Zeba Bakhtiar became an overnight star in India after playing the lead role in the 1991 film Henna.
Acting alongside Rishi Kapoor, she played the role of a Pakistani-Kashmiri girl and touched the hearts of viewers with the emotional love story. She also acted in the film Anarkali, where again she played a girl unlucky in love.
Just like her film characters, her personal life was also not successful when it came to love and marriage. Zeba got married four times, and all her marriages ended in divorce.
Zeba’s father, Yahya Bakhtiar, was a lawyer and politician. He also served as the Attorney General of Pakistan. Her mother was a Hungarian-born British woman.
Zeba grew up in Quetta, Pakistan, and in 1985, she had her first marriage with a man named Salman Valiani. However, they got divorced just a year later. Reports say they had a daughter, who was later adopted by Zeba’s sister.
Two years after her divorce, Zeba made her TV debut at the age of 25 in the series Anarkali. Her performance as the main character was praised and helped her gain recognition in the industry.
Her career took a big turn when legendary Bollywood director Raj Kapoor signed her for his last film Henna. He was impressed by her beauty and wanted her to play the lead role opposite his son Rishi Kapoor. The film became a super hit, and Zeba became popular in India as well.
Before entering Bollywood with Henna in 1991, Zeba secretly married Indian actor Javed Jaffrey in 1989. When rumors started to spread, Zeba denied them and called them false. But Javed made their marriage certificate public. One year later, the couple got divorced, and in 1991, Javed married someone else named Habiba Jaffrey.
At the same time, Zeba’s film was released and made her a well-known actress across India and Pakistan.
After the success of Henna, Zeba acted in four more Bollywood films like Mohabbat Ki Arzoo and Jai Vikraanta, alongside actors like Vinod Khanna and Jackie Shroff. But none of these films did well, and after a series of flops, she returned to Pakistan.
In 1993, Zeba married Adnan Sami, who was Pakistani at that time. Their marriage attracted a lot of attention because Adnan was younger and new in the industry, while Zeba was already famous. Many people thought they were not a good match. In 1995, they appeared together in the Pakistani film Sargam, which was loved by the audience.
A year after marriage, Zeba and Adnan welcomed their son Azaan Sami Khan, who has followed in their footsteps and is now a music composer and actor.
After a few years, their marriage started to face problems and ended in divorce. They also fought a legal battle over the custody of their son. In the end, Zeba got custody, but Adnan was also given responsibilities.
Adnan later got married again, but that marriage also failed. He is now living happily with his third wife Roya, whom he married in 2010. They have a daughter together.
In 2009, it was reported that Zeba married a man named Sohail Khan Leghari at the age of 47. But that marriage ended within a year, making it her fourth divorce.
It is important to note that Zeba has never publicly mentioned her second marriage to Javed Jaffrey or her fourth marriage to Sohail. However, in an interview with a Pakistani news portal, she did talk about her first marriage before joining showbiz and called Adnan Sami her second husband.
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