On being married to Preity Zinta’s ex: Suchithra Pillai addresses the ‘boyfriend snatcher’ tag

Actress Suchithra Pillai recently opened up on being called a ‘boyfriend snatcher’. In an interview, the ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ actress opened up on dealing with the name-calling and mudslinging, when she married Bollywood diva Preity Zinta’s ex-boyfriend Lars Kjeldse.

In an interview with Siddharth Kannan, the ‘Fashion’ star settled the debate around fer equation with the Veer Zaara actress once and for all. She stated that she was not the reason for their split. She also revealed that contrary to speculations, she was not even close to Zinta.

“Preity and I were never friends; we were acquaintances because we had a common friend. But, yes, Lars Kjeldsen did date Preity Zinta for some time, but that was the breakup he had before he met me, and only this part is true. It is a totally different reason that they split. I didn’t come between them," she said.


Pillai claimed that a big misunderstanding led to the “boyfriend snatcher” tag.

"The big news that happened, which was a big misunderstanding, it was not because of me. It happened at the time I came back from England, I was called a ‘boyfriend snatcher’ on the cover of several magazines. The headline read, ‘Suchitra Pillai is a boyfriend snatcher,'" Pillai recalled.

She added, "It was because I started dating Andrew Coyne, who had started Star Television in India. This was the relationship in question, but it was not because of me that Andrew and his partner and model Achala Sachdev fell apart. It is water under the bridge after many years, and Achala and I laugh about it.”

Suchitra Pillai married Lars Kjeldse in 2005. The pair have a 16-year-old daughter called Annika. Kjeldse is an engineer from Denmark.

Zinta is married Gene Goodenough. The pair welcomed a pair of twins - Jai and Gia via surrogacy in 2021.