3 minutes of readingNew DelhiUpdated: Jan 31, 2026 08:37 pm IST
Tabu says she never knew her father, never used her name’s connection to her father, which has been non-existent since her parents divorced when she was three. The actress, today considered one of the strongest actresses of her generation, comes from a family of strong women. She, however, was a quiet girl who finally found her voice. In an old interview, she talked about not being connected to her father, after her parents’ divorce. Taboowho is now 54, even spoke openly about being single in a separate 2017 interview.
During a conversation with Simi Garewal on Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, she spoke about her childhood: “I had a great childhood, we lived in Hyderabad All our lives I lived with my grandparents (my mother’s parents), after my parents divorced. My mother was a teacher and I ended up spending more time with her mother, and my grandmother prayed and read books, and I grew up with that. I was very shy, I had no voice, in fact even after I became a heroine, an actor, I had no voice.” Tabu’s elder sister Farah was an actress in the 80s, she is also related to actress Shabana Azmi.
In the same interview, the actress also spoke about not wanting to meet her father as she is now busy with her own life, and why she never used her surname ‘Hashmi’. “I never really used it, I never thought it was important for me to use my father’s last name, it was always Tabassum Fatima, which was my middle name. At school, Fatima was my last name.”
READ ALSO | Tabu reveals two rules Akshay Kumar swears by, which haven’t changed in 25 years: ‘He wakes up at 4 am, he doesn’t go to parties’
And she continued: “I have no memories of him. My sister has met him on occasions, but I never had the desire to meet him. I am not curious about him, I am happy the way I am, the way I have grown up. I am very settled in my own life.” Tabu’s parents divorced when she was only 3 years old and her father married someone else and has two daughters with his second wife.
Tabu has never been married and has often opened up about being single in various interviews. During a chat with Hindustan Times in 2017, she said: “Honestly, it’s not that it’s stopped bothering me; the fact is that it’s never bothered me at all. I don’t see what the problem is, being single or not being single. For me, it’s not a (variant for) evaluating someone. I mean, I don’t evaluate someone based on their marital status or whether they have children or not. And if people have them, this is for me, I don’t know and I don’t want to go there.”
Meanwhile, on the work front, Tabu has a few films lined up, including Puri Jagannadh’s pan-India film with Vijay Sethupathi and Priyadarshan’s horror comedy. bengali bhooth alongside Akshay Kumar, which is scheduled to release this year.