Happy birthday Deepika Padukone: Did you know she secretly got engaged to Ranveer Singh four years before wedding?

Deepika Padukone fell in love with Ranveer Singh in 2012, during the making of Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-Leela. After six years of being in a relationship, they tied the knot in dual ceremonies–to honour each other’s traditions–in 2018.

As Deepika turns 36 on Wednesday, here is revisiting one of her interviews in which she talked about her secret engagement with Ranveer, two years into their relationship. She said that they kept the news under wraps, with only their immediate families in the know.

In an interview with Filmfare in 2018, Deepika said about her relationship with Ranveer, “When I look back, six months into it I was pretty much emotionally invested in us. After that, it was when do we get married? I was never unsure about him.”

“Of course, in a six-year-long relationship, you go through your ups and downs but we never broke up. There was no major fight or saying let’s take time off and figure this out. We’ve fought; we’ve had our ups and downs. But we stuck through all of that. We got engaged four years ago… No one knows this. We got engaged four years ago. Only his parents and my parents and our respective sisters knew about it,” she added.

Ranveer and Deepika got married at Lake Como in Italy, away from the limelight. However, they hosted multiple receptions after returning to India, including one for members of the media.

Currently, Deepika is looking forward to the release of Gehraiyaan, directed by Shakun Batra. The film, which will be out on Amazon Prime Video on January 25, also stars Siddhant Chaturvedi, Ananya Panday and Dhairya Karwa.

Apart from this, Deepika has a number of films in the pipeline, including Pathan, Fighter, a cinematic adaptation of the Mahabharata, Nag Ashwin’s Project-K and the Hindi remake of The Intern. She has also signed her second Hollywood project, a cross-cultural romantic comedy, which she will also co-produce under her banner Ka Productions.