Delbar Arya doesn’t walk into a conversation like a star. She listens. She observes. And when she speaks, it isn’t to impress, but to reflect. In a profession that often demands performance off-screen as much as on it, Delbar is refreshingly unguarded, curious, candid and rooted in something deeper than ambition.Born and raised in Germany to a family steeped in the arts — her father a revered actor in Iran and her siblings are creatives in their own right — Delbar’s world was always shaped by performance, but never by pretence. “I grew up watching my dad perform. Acting and dancing were just always there. I don’t know anything beyond the arts,” she says with quiet certainty. “That’s the world I was raised in.”Her formal training included seven years of theatre in Germany, a foundation that grounded her in craft long before the camera found her. But it was a serendipitous indie film, A Boy in Bollywood shot for the Swedish Film Festival in India that drew her in. “That shoot in Mumbai sparked something in me,” she says. “I thought, maybe I should give this a try.”She moved to Mumbai in 2016. The dream was Hindi cinema. The reality, as with many outsiders, came with trials, auditions, rejections, networking nightmares, and then Downtown happened. This Guru Randhawa music video became her breakout moment. “I had a German passport and they needed someone who could fly to Canada in a week,” she recalls. But what followed wasn’t just a job, it was a redirection. “I’d come to India with dreams of Bollywood. I never thought I’d find myself in Punjabi cinema.”For someone with no roots in Punjab, Delbar dived in headfirst. She learnt Gurmukhi at a gurdwara. She read scripts in the original. She observed. “I ask a lot of questions about culture, posture, how a girl from a village would sit or speak. I like to come prepared, even if everything on set ends up being spontaneous.”In her short but busy filmography which includes Pyaar Tu Hove Main Hova, Damdaa and upcoming projects such as Madania and Jado Da Mobile Aa Gaya, Delbar has played everything from a glamorous NRI to a small-town girl in salwar suits. Her choices are driven not by appearance, but emotional connection.“I don’t just want to look beautiful on screen. I want to challenge myself. Delbar says she isn’t in a rush her focus is on doing the work and playing the long game.
Delbar Arya unfiltered – The Tribune
