- Ram Gopal Varma and Urmila Matondkar were rumored to have secretly married in the 1990s
- Chiranjeevi claimed the couple married in a temple in Andhra Pradesh and shared the priest's number
- Urmila Matondkar denied the marriage claim and reacted emotionally when contacted by a journalist
Ram Gopal Varma and Urmila Matondkar, who were rumoured to be dating in the 1990s, are back in the headlines after a fresh wave of speculation reignited discussions around their relationship. A senior journalist claimed that the couple allegedly got married in secret while they were dating.
In a conversation with Siddharth Kannan on his YouTube channel, veteran Bollywood journalist Jyoti Venkatesh said the information came from Chiranjeevi when he met the actor on the sets of Gentleman. "Chiranjeevi told me, 'Jyoti, as a journalist, you write about everything, then why did you not write about Ram Gopal Varma's marriage to Urmila'," he said.
When the journalist expressed his surprise at the news and asked for evidence of the claim, the actor revealed that the marriage took place in a temple in Andhra Pradesh and also gave the phone number of the priest who performed the ceremony.
However, before publishing the news, Venkatesh called Urmila to confirm the marriage. He claimed that the actress started crying. She said, 'How can you write about me like that.. You have known about me since I entered the industry." The journalist said he also reached out to RGV for a statement but the filmmaker refused to comment.
Jyoti Venkatesh also addressed the reason behind the reported split between Ram Gopal Varma and Urmila Matondkar. According to him, Urmila wanted to enter into a legal marriage with RGV, but he was not ready to take that step at the time. which ultimately led to their separation.
The rumoured couple extensively worked together from the 1990s to the early 2000s. They collaborated for films like Rangeela, Daud, Satya and Pyaar Tune Kya Kiya.
During the peak of their professional collaborations, speculation about their relationship began to surface in industry circles. Some media reports at the time suggested the equation had gone beyond work, a development that was also said to have strained RGV's relationship with his then-wife, Ratna Varma.
RGV later addressed his admiration for the actor in his autobiography, Guns & Thighs: The Story of My Life. He dedicated an entire chapter titled "Women in My Life" to Urmila, writing that he was mesmerised by her beauty. According to the director, it was that very fascination that inspired him to cast her as the lead in Rangeela.
