Dia Mirza or Diya Mirza Handrich, nicknamed Dee, (born December 9, 1981) is a former Indian model and actress who appears in Bollywood films. She was Miss Asia Pacific for the year 2000 and was also second runner up in the Femina Miss India 2000 beauty pageant.
Dia Mirza was born in Hyderabad, India, she is of Bengali/German origin. Her father, Frank Handrich, was a German interior designer from Munich and her mother is Deepa, a Bengali Indian. They separated when she was six years old. Her father died when she was nine and her mother remarried Ahmed Mirza who died in 2004. She retained a Muslim surname (Mirza) from her stepfather, though she herself is a Hindu. Later she adopted the last name of her birth-father and became Dia Mirza Handrich.
She stated that she suffered from "low self-esteem" and severe depression as a child. When living in Khairatabad, Hyderabad, she attended Vidyaranya High School For Boys And Girls, a school based on the teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti, and later Nasr School, in Kushnuma.
Currently, she lives in Bandra, Mumbai. To brush up on acting before Shootout at Lokhandwala, she took a one week course of Film at New York University.
She made her cinematic debut with Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein opposite R. Madhavan. The film was not a box office success. A series of unsuccessful films followed, among them Tumsa Nahin Dekha and Deewaanapan.
In 2005, Mirza appeared in Parineeta, a Vidhu Vinod Chopra production. She also played in the music video Kajara Mohabbat Wala alongside Sonu Nigam from the album Kajara Nite. The album contained multiple remixes, but was mainly advertised with the title song, sang by Sonu Nigam and Alisha Chinai.
She has also appeared in the movie Dus and in Fight Club. She will appear later this year in Familywala and Naa Naa Karte.Early in her career she was tagged as a look-alike of Aishwarya Rai.
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