Tabu & Lara Dutta Movies Together List — 4 Films

The shape of the work

The 2010s account for 75% of everything they made together. The 2000s belonged to Fanaa; the 2010s to David. Tabu acted in every film; Lara Dutta acted in all of them. Mostly Hindi, with 1 film in Tamil.

Partnership facts

• Tabu and Lara Dutta first shared screen space in Fanaa (2006) because the director Kunal Kohli wanted two strong female leads who could hold their own against Aamir Khan. He cast them without a screen test, trusting their reputations.
• In Fanaa, Tabu played the blind Zooni and Lara played her bubbly best friend. Lara deliberately kept her energy high in every scene to make Tabu's stillness and vulnerability pop more. Tabu later said Lara's loudness made her silence work.
• During the shoot of Fanaa in Kashmir, Tabu and Lara shared a room for two weeks because the hotel ran out of single rooms. They stayed up late talking about everything except films. They've called each other 'roomie' ever since.
• Their pairing in David (2013) — where they played a married couple in one of the two parallel stories — directly inspired the casting of two strong, older female leads in the 2018 film Manto. The director said he wanted the same 'unflashy authority' they brought.
• Lara Dutta said in a 2016 interview: 'Tabu is the only co-star I've ever asked for a scene to be reshot because I felt I wasn't matching her. She makes you want to be better.'
• In Fitoor (2016), they played mother and daughter. Tabu insisted on rehearsing their confrontation scene 12 times before the shoot. Lara said Tabu's intensity made her cry for real in the final take — the director kept that take in the film.