Director Kiran Rao worked on many projects before breaking into the movie business, including the well-known movie Lagaan starring Aamir Khan. In an episode of the podcast Cyrus Says, Kiran Rao revealed that the source of her necessary financial stability came from her earnings from her work in advertising. In a sense, I was a gig worker. I would take jobs when they came up, working for as long as they paid, then I would worry about whether my savings would last and whether I could pay my rent, all the while scrambling to find the next job.
” When the host mentioned her involvement in Lagaan and suggested it should have been financially rewarding, she explained, “Feature films didn’t pay. It was advertising that paid me the money to live in Mumbai. With Lagaan, the first AD system kind of started coming in.”
Kiran also recounted buying her first car from her father for ₹ 1 lakh, saying, “I bought my car from my dad. He sold it to me for ₹ 1 lakh. Have you ever heard of that? My father was like, ‘This is the only way you will save money.’ We drove it from Bangalore to Mumbai on the newly minted expressway.”
In a recent interview earlier this year, Kiran Rao talked about her decision to publicly announce her divorce from Aamir Khan. Speaking to NDTV, she said, “It was a conscious decision because in some ways, we do realise that…You know you are in the public gaze. You are living your life very publicly. What we were doing was completely legal, morally and ethically fine. It’s better to be upfront about it and not let people guess about it.”
Regarding her career, Kiran Rao returned to directing with Laapataa Ladies, her first film since a decade ago. Both critics and viewers alike have been praising the movie. The production company of Aamir Khan is a co-producer of the movie.