Mumbai: Arjun Rampal recently opened up about one of the toughest periods of his life, when he was simultaneously coping with his separation from former Miss India and supermodel Mehr Jesia and his mother’s cancer diagnosis.
Looking back on that phase, the actor described it as an extremely lonely and emotionally draining time, admitting that he felt as though he was “losing everything” around him.
In a conversation with Sohini on Cancelled to Crown on YouTube, the actor shared: “I think the loneliest I have ever felt is when I was not connected with myself the way I am today. My marriage was not working out and it’s sad because I think love is not constant. Everything in life is not constant. I think that was maybe the darkest phase of my life because at that point in time it was exactly the time my mum had cancer and I was losing her. I was losing everybody who was close to me. I had lost my father three years before that. I was losing friends. I was losing everything that I had worked so hard to get.”
He revealed it was during this period that he met Gabriella Demetriades, who became an anchor in his life.
“I was very lucky because I got somebody like Gabriella into my life who I think was a very strong anchor and was also coming from a space of maybe a lot of darkness as well. So we both were in the storm and we had to, like I said, weather it. But it’s good, we got to weather it together and then the blessings came,” shared Arjun.
Arjun and Mehr first met during their modelling careers, and eventually fell in love.
The couple married in 1998 and welcomed two daughters, Mahikaa in 2002 and Myra in 2005.
After two decades of marriage, they announced separation in 2018 and officially got divorced in November 2019.
Arjun met Gabriella through mutual friends, and the two began dating. The couple, who are parents to two sons, revealed they were engaged during an appearance on Rhea Chakraborty’s podcast in December last year.
On the work front, Arjun was last seen in Aditya Dhar’s ‘Dhurandhar’ and ‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’ as ISI agent Major Iqbal.
