Samara Tijori knows the question that’s inevitably coming. And she knows how to field it expertly, right off the bat. The Daldal (2026) star is indeed the daughter of actor-director Deepak Tijori. Audiences may remember him from movies such as Aashiqui (1990), Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (1992) and Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa (1994). But Tijori is quick to point out that growing up, the film world was more backdrop than foreground.
Stumbling In
“My core set of friends and everybody that I’ve had in my life since I was growing up were pretty much non-media people,” she says. She did visit her father on set sometimes, but mostly as a way to spend time with him when she was younger, not as a student of the craft. “There was no interest from my end in acting back then,” she says.
The interest in the big screen, when it arrived, came sideways. At 16, she thought she might model. An unpaid internship at Wizcraft for IIFA in 2014 followed — she was a runner, a fixer, a one-woman logistics department for film stars at shoots in Orlando and Miami. “If Sonakshi Sinha needed something at Disney World, or Chunky Panday needed something in Miami — I was that person,” she says with a laugh.
After that, Tijori decided this was the world she wanted to inhabit, realising that if she wanted to pursue this seriously, she needed to be on an actual set.
Next came a stint as an assistant director on Dishoom (2016) — Rohit Dhawan’s film — while she was still in her third year of college. She started with assisting the costume AD. Once that was over, she joined an acting course.
For someone who spends a lot of time in her own head — reading thrillers, watching crime documentaries and cataloguing human behaviour — a set, it turns out, is the one place she gets to simply be.
School to Screen
Growing up in Mumbai, she went to Jamnabai Narsee school, then packed her bags for Mayo College in Ajmer for higher secondary education. After that, it was back to the big city and Sophia College, where she studied psychology — a choice that wasn’t accidental, and one that would end up shaping everything that came after. “I pursued psychology to study criminology,” she says. “I have always been very curious about the criminal mind.”
That served her well on Daldal, in which she played Anita Acharya — the character that has made half the internet despise her and the other half fall in love with her. The audience response has been — to put it mildly — a lot. Long DMs from strangers telling her they felt Acharya’s pain. Someone writing in to say this is what happens when mental health goes unchecked. And then, just recently, someone sliding into her inbox with a simple: “What is this behaviour?” She loves that one.
But Tijori does not yet feel like she’s made it. “No, no, no,” she says when asked. “I’m overwhelmed as hell. I don’t know my head from my toes.” She’s also wary about crashing and burning too soon, understanding that the world isn’t always kind to star kids. “I think I’m going project by project, because I know that I have to work as hard if not more in each thing that I do,” she says matter-of-factly.
Next in Line
She’s still auditioning; she has three lined up. No floodgates of offers pouring in, no confirmed project — and she seems oddly okay with that. She’s been here before: a three-year gap between her series Masoom (2022) and Daldal taught her patience and how to remain selective about the work she chooses to do.
She wants to do something lighter eventually — she’s a dancer, she can sing, and given half a chance, she would absolutely love to run around trees in a chiffon saree, if the role called for it. “Why not?” she asks. But for now, she’s drawn to the layered, the dark, the psychologically complex. It checks out then that her dream role is Zendaya’s in Euphoria.
Most newcomers arrive with a carefully rehearsed version of themselves. Tijori, it would appear, seems to have misplaced the script — and perhaps she’s all the better for it.
Does she worry about the constant threat of being asked that inevitable question about her father everywhere she goes? Not really. “I don’t dislike it, because it’s bound to happen.”
She points out that she’s also a lot like her mother. “I think I’m 60 per cent mom, 40 per cent dad. I’ve learned how to be calm from him. It takes a lot to piss me off, unlike in the show. He’s also super calm; very live and let live.”
Some people have said she’s better than him. She’s quick to disagree. “Glad you feel this way,” she told one such commenter, “but I don’t. But okay, thanks for letting me know.”
WINDING DOWN
What she’s reading & watching
“I recently read Ward D by Frida McFadden, the same author who wrote The Housemaid. I only read thrillers. It’s always called to me; I’ve been very curious about the human mind and how all of this works and how people behave. So, in my free time, I randomly watch documentaries because honestly, it also makes for fantastic television.”
SOCIAL CONNECTION
What she uses social media for
“As of now, I use social media only for reviews. And reading everything, comments, this, that. But I tend to use social media to look at memes. And, of course, whenever I do a photo shoot or take a trip, I do like to put that out because I like to keep it very authentic for myself. I don’t want to show you another side of me because I’m playing such dark characters on screen — when you come to my Instagram, you should know who I actually am.”