Suchitra Krishnamoorti was a teenager when she first met Shekhar Kapur, and she was instantly in love. In a recent interview, Suchitra, who is best known for playing Shah Rukh Khan’s love interest in Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa, opened up about her love story with the director and said that she was a complete “fangirl” when she met him.

In a chat with Hauterrfly, Suchitra said that she was not wooed by Shekhar. Instead, she was the one who wooed him. “The first time I saw him, I was in 11th standard. He was a chief guest at my college, and he looked at me, and he said something, and I was like… I was a fangirl,” she said. Shekhar and Suchitra have a 30-year age gap.

She recalled that veteran photographer Gautam Rajadhyaksha sent her to meet Shekhar when she was 18 for a film, but the film never got made. “After I met him, he would call, take me out. My sister used to be furious. She would say, ‘Uncle, leave my baby alone’,” she recalled with a laugh. Since the age gap between the two was 30 years, Suchitra’s family wasn’t very inclined to her union with Shekhar. He had previously been married for a decade and had gotten divorced five years before he decided to tie the knot again. “My mother touched my feet and said, ‘Don’t do this’,” she recalled.

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After eight years, the two decided to separate, and at this point, Suchitra’s parents offered their unequivocal support. “When things started to go wrong, my parents… This is the kind of support I wish every girl has. My mom was like, ‘You don’t have to put up with anything disrespectful or dishonouring you. You are not some orphan’.”

Suchita and Shekhar continued to co-parent their daughter Kaveri, who was six when her parents divorced. But, for Suchitra, co-parenting was different as her daughter primarily lived with her, and she saw Shekhar as a “vacation dad”. “Co-parenting basically means that the mother does all the work and the father gets all the praise. I say Shekhar is a vacation dad, but he is the best vacation dad. So Kaveri has the best of both worlds. She keeps zipping off to wherever her father is in the world and I will always say that Kaveri is actually closer to him than she is to me, which is a great compliment,” she said.

In an earlier chat with Siddharth Kannan, Suchitra said that their marriage started falling apart in the first year itself, but Suchitra decided to stay because she was pregnant. “At the time I got pregnant, I was about to leave my marriage. I got a scholarship at the Berkeley School of Music and wanted to learn music but then I got pregnant. So, I feel fate has a way of unravelling itself. After getting pregnant, I stayed for a few years, but then I said, ‘Forget it, mujhse nahi hota,’” she said.

Suchitra and Shekhar have not married again.