Subhash K Jha (DNA; January 28, 2015)

He may look all macho but TV star Gurmeet Choudhary is painfully shy around women in real life. In fact, it took an intervention by wife Debina Bonnerjee to convince him to go ahead with love-making scenes with actress Sapna Pabbi for his debut flick, Khamoshiyan.

He laughs, recalling the pep talk, sharing, “When I was seeing Debina, I could never bring myself to say ‘I love you’ to her. It was she who had to finally say, ‘You’re trying to tell me that you love me, right?’ Thank God, she got it out of me. Otherwise I may have never been able to let her know my true feelings.”

He adds, “She has always been very encouraging. She’s an actress herself. She understands this business. She knows everything I do, whether a love sequence or a fight sequence, that it’s all make-believe.”

And what did Debina have to say about his performance? Gurmeet says, “We’re both much too close to the film to be objective about the film and my performance.”

Debina, in fact, has a role in Khamoshiyan. But Gurmeet can’t reveal what she plays. “All I can say is, she comes at a crucial juncture in the plot. She makes a difference to the lives of the characters, including mine.”