Within the first few minutes of our lunch, Lisa Haydon tears up. Twice. Three things become immediately clear. First, she’s extremely likeable, a real girl’s girl with the kind of disarming sincerity that makes you want to root for her and hope you can be friends. Second, in the almost-decade that she’s largely stayed away from the public eye, she’s been through significant turmoil and transformation that have changed her foundationally. And third, this is going to be a challenging interview. I’m waiting for Haydon in the maximalist parlour of Scarlett House, Malaika Arora’s buzzy Indo-Portuguese restaurant in Mumbai’s Pali village. “Hey,” she says upon arriving, upbeat but apprehensive. “I’m Lisa.” I’m expecting a glittering, jet-setting former It girl to show up and, instead, a goofy mom of three sporting printed tights and a body-morphing tee plops down on the chair opposite me, her eyes brimming with tears. “I’m so sorry,” she purrs in an accent I can’t quite discern. “My agent sent me your questions on the way here. They’re deep, and the answers run deeper. I don’t know if you’re ready for that.” She wipes away the moisture from her eyes as she observes my surprise. “I thought you would just ask me about my skincare,” she laughs, lightening the tenor. “No one in the public has ever wanted to know me in this way.” At 39, Haydon looks refreshingly like herself with ebony hair, face wash-commercial skin and no apparent makeup. Unlike many of her contemporaries, not to mention much younger actors, she doesn’t seem to have plumped her fine lines into the atmosphere. Her face, youthful in its planes and shadows, the near-perfect symmetry accentuated by the ambient light of the restaurant, is made for the screen. “I don’t feel famous in my day-to-day,” she remarks, interrupting my assiduous assessment of her. “Eleven months a year, I forget that I’m anything other than a mom.” The actor, who lives in Phuket with her businessman husband Dino Lalvani and their children, worked as a model until she was spotted by Anil Kapoor in a cafe and cast in Aisha (2010). The camera was instantly smitten, but Haydon has always had a push-and-pull relationship with fame. You’d think she would capitalise on the popularity that characters like Vijayalakshmi (Queen) and Lisa (Ae Dil Hai Mushkil) earned her. Yet, she doesn’t seem to crave recognition at all. That’s not to say she doesn’t put in the work because she approaches every gig with dogged determination, like she’s still got a lot to prove. “I’ve always preferred to stay on the outskirts so I could retreat, work on myself and come back more interesting,” she admits. She brings her hair to one side and twists it into a lopsided braid, distractedly. “I admire the people who are in the heat of things, entrenched in fame and success permanently. It’s very hard. Takes a lot of inner strength.” For those who wonder why she quit the movies, Haydon argues that she didn’t: she never embraced acting fully enough to need to do that. Her career has been punctured by temporary soft retirements, where she retreats into her peripatetic lifestyle (Australia in 2004, India in 2007, London in 2017, Hong Kong in 2020). Where to next? “Dino and I have discussed moving to Lake Como at some point. It’s a 40-minute drive to a direct flight anywhere and, of course, to a fabulous dinner in Milano,” she laughs. Although she clearly values the life she’s built—morning meditations, breakfast with the family, Pilates, juice with a friend, horse riding on the beach, playdates, lounging by the pool—Haydon doesn’t strike me as someone in need of materiality. “I never move with an entourage and often travel economy,” she confesses. “When I’m in Bombay, I always order a self-drive car. I know I’m part of an industry that affords certain privileges, but I don’t want to sign up for the whole thing.” Our food arrives—khichdi with extra green chillies for her and a burrata and fig salad for me. She treats the khichdi like a delicacy, exclaiming at it, comforted by it, but continues talking about heavy matters in between bites. “My mum made us do Bible verses. It was very important to her. I can’t tell you how far I walked away from it and how deep that runs today.” Her fingers grasp at the air around her chest, indicating where her heart is. “I always wanted to make something of myself and looked up to all the supermodels. I thought that was something to aspire to. I just couldn’t wait to begin that life. So much of my teens and twenties was driven by the ache to be known and loved.” It was a time before Instagram, so popularity wasn’t measured against followers, but blurred photos of Haydon going out with her model friends were a common sight amidst tabloid pages. A climacteric moment came in 2016. “My mum was dying of cancer in Australia. By the end, she couldn’t walk or eat. On her deathbed, my seven siblings and I were around her, holding hands, and I remember thinking, ‘At least she has us.’” That was a wake-up call. “I was busy pursuing all the things, except for the one thing I knew I wanted. Family.” A couple of months later, she discovered she was pregnant and decided to get married to her now-husband. It should’ve been the happiest time of her life. “I was struggling with my identity,” Haydon reveals instead. “I was thinking that if I feel lost, maybe I deserve to, because of the unconscious life that I have lived.” Her subsequent move to London was also emotionally difficult. “I remember going for a walk and breaking down.” She’s crying again. This time, tears stream down her face. “I wrote to a friend saying, ‘I don’t know who I am.’” Her nose and cheeks have turned crimson, but she proceeds with grace. “‘You’re a ballerina dancing in a wind-up box,’ her answer said. It made so much sense. It all looks perfect from the outside, but when you close the box, it’s lonely inside. That was truly how I felt.” Today, Haydon sounds like a woman who’s finally free. “Nothing was lacking, but so much was lacking within. I think there are trigger moments in life which can make you receptive to the truth and deeper meanings of purpose.” That’s when she found God. “If the only messaging of my life is that I’m good-looking, I would feel like I have failed. It needs to be more profound than that. Having kids awakened that in me. I just innately started understanding what I don’t stand for anymore.” Suddenly, she shrugs. “Am I talking too much? Can we talk about you now?” We can’t, it’s her interview. But she persists, and I tell her about my hiatus from media, finding stillness in art and dating in my thirties. She listens intently, and it occurs to me that she’s been trying to read me as much as I her, running her eyes across me like she’s doing an x-ray of my soul. She offers to gift me a modern rendition of the Bible and says, “God would suit you so well.” As I scramble for an appropriate response, she bursts out laughing. “I know how I sound because I’ve been on the other side.” She’s playful with her theism, skilled in making her message more palatable. A common folly amongst writers is to “figure out” their subjects, make sense of them in neat ways and serve them up for consumption. Haydon, frustratingly, won’t fit into moulds. She’s a myriad of contradictions—as most people are—but she seems to have found peace at the point of confluence. She’s put miles between herself and the movies, yet uses “vatavaran” in her daily vernacular. By her own admission, she’s scared to live anywhere for too long, yet she feels as if she has been steadied, fixed in place. She can go from meditating on her existential crisis to claiming to hear the voice of God to wondering if we should get dessert. This kind of mental toggling seems like classic Lisa Haydon. No sooner does the model’s trenchantly toned frame exit the restaurant than multiple phone cameras come alive at once. Seemingly oblivious, Haydon laments, “Inching closer to 40 has taken a toll on my body. I can see my waist increasing and my upper body becoming more slender.” She clocks my incredulity and continues, “I know I’m lucky to have this body even after three children, but I work hard for it. The whole 100gm protein and lifting weights thing doesn’t work for me, so I’m back to Pilates.” She stops, poses for a selfie and continues talking. “The best trade secret is good sleep. I take every supplement that helps with that. Have you heard of cow colostrum?” I haven’t. “Helps induce baby-like sleep.” Speaking of babies, she would love to have a fourth child but hasn’t frozen her eggs. “I’ve left it up to God,” she grins. “The plan will reveal itself soon.” Hair: Sonam Solanki/Feat Artists Makeup: Eleni Chatzinikolidou/Anima Creatives Bookings editor: Aliza Fatma Art direction: Shagun Jangid Entertainment director: Megha Mehta Senior entertainment editor (consultant): Rebecca Gonsalves Production: Imran Khatri Productions Assisted by: Anupam Diwan (photography); Ankur Nitwal (styling); Aashima Chopra, Anna Mehta (bookings); Hrithik Patel (production) Location courtesy: Airavat—A Home by Architect Apoorva Shroff This story appears in Vogue India’s July-August 2025 issue, now on stands. Subscribe here. 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