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Zoya Akhtar along with Anupam Kher, Anurag Kashyap and others are the newest members of The Academy.
Akhtar’s latest movie Gully Boy has been one of the biggest hits of 2019 so far.
She had made her directorial debut with Luck By Chance in 2009.
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On Tuesday, The Academy Awards or Oscars introduced 842 new members to its Academy and standing tall amongst the crowd were many Indians, including the Gully Boy director Zoya Akhtar.
It was neither Luck nor chance that won Zoya Akhtar the honour. In spite of being born to the famous screen writer, Javed Akhtar and his then wife Honey Irani in 1972. Her brother Farhan Akhtar too is a director-turned-actor. Her step mother Shabana Azmi is an award winning actress
Zoya – The producer
After graduating from New York University, Akhtar went on to work with award-winning filmmakers like Mira Nair. Later, she produced movies and one of them is her brother’s directorial venture Dil Chahta Hain.
Directorial debut
Zoya too made her directorial debut with Luck By Chance which starred her brother Farhan as an actor. The film met with success at the box office as well as with the critics.
Chasing success
Akhtar then went on to make movies like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Bombay Talkies, Dil Dhadakne Do and the very recent Gully Boy, which could arguably be one of the biggest movies of 2019 so far.
Lust for the web
She is also one of the early adopters of the new-age cinema with short films and web series. She directed one of the films in Netflix’s Lust Stories, also directed Amazon Prime’s popular series, Made in Heaven.