Ayesha Takia, who’s the daughter of film producer Nishith Takia, and was also a well-known actor of the early 2000s, is nowhere to be seen now. She did her first movie ‘Taarzan: The Wonder Car’ which was a superhit one in itself and made her popular only when she was 18-19 years old, but then what happened afterwards which made her leave the industry eventually?
Ayesha Takia was born on 10 April 1986 and started modelling when she was just 13. She appeared onscreen for the first time in a ‘Complan’ advertisement alongside Shahid Kapoor when she was just a kid.
Then she paved her way into bollywood in 2004 with the movie ‘Taarzan’ for which she won the Filmfare Best Debut Award and also the IIFA Award Star Debut of the Year Female. After that, many producers wanted to sign her as she had already garnered a fanbase which even many experienced lead actresses struggle with.
Then she got 4 back to back films in 2005, 3 in 2006 and a surprising 6 films in 2007. But even after all those projects, she couldn’t gain the recognition as was expected from her. Now, the problem here was not that she wasn’t getting films, but most of her films weren’t working and going as flop at the box office and people were constantly comparing all of her films, even the ones which worked fairly, to her first superhit ‘Taarzan’. In the year 2008, the number of films of Ayesha dropped to 2, which too, didn’t work well.
In 2009 she did 2 movies, one with Akshay Kumar named ‘8 x 10 Tasveer’ and the other with Salman Khan named ‘Wanted’. If we look at it from today’s perspective, we might think that this one would have helped boost her career, but it didn’t go that way, the reason being that back then even Salman Khan, who’s a superstar right now, was in his downfall phase, as most of his films weren’t working, just like Ayesha’s. So, people weren’t very hopeful of this one too, but surprisingly, it worked very well.
After that, Salman Khan made a comeback in the industry and kept giving superhits afterwards namely- Dabangg, Bodyguard, Ek Tha Tiger and many more. While on the other hand, it was the opposite for Ayesha. She did 2 more films in 2010 and her last movie dates back to 2011, named ‘Mod’. Including Bollywood and the South industry, she has been in a total of 21 films.
Now, the main reason for her leaving the industry surely comes down to her not being able to deliver superhits and blockbusters, but there were other reasons too, which made the filmmakers sideline her from the film world, the major one being that she married in 2008 at a mere age of 23, and the way the audience looked at actresses then is very different from how they look now. Back in the 2000s, the audience only preferred young and unmarried actresses for the lead role, and so did filmmakers as according to them, they were more pretty and appealing. So, this decision of Ayesha marrying soon, didn’t work in favour of her Bollywood career. Then finally in 2011, she left bollywood and she hasn’t made a comeback ever since.
As of now, Ayesha’s living in Mumbai with her husband, Farhan Azmi, who owns a hotel and her 3 year old son, Mikail Azmi.
