When Kapadia returned to films after her separation from Khanna, she faced constant comparison to her "Bobby" days and struggled to be taken seriously as an actor. According to Jyotika Virdi, the author of the book "The Cinematic Imagination", while Kapadia's trajectory is different from those of other female Hindi film stars, she turned her disadvantages to her advantage. Virdi said Kapadia's forthright manner made a major contribution to her career: "Speaking candidly to the press, she and the reporters plotted her life's narrative from the innocent teenager snared into an impossible marriage to the emergence of a mature 'woman with experience.'" Kapadia is known for her assertive and moody nature; during the making of "Janbaaz" (1986), the director Feroz Khan said he had never met a woman with her levels of "pent-up aggression". The journalist Bhawana Somaaya, who conducted a series of interviews with Kapadia during the 1980s, stated: "She's a strange bundle of contradictions. Her moods change in a jiffy." According to some critics, this approach has sometimes been at the cost of professional opportunities as "her unpredictable nature and moods have distanced many well wishers". In reply to this, she said: "I am moody by nature. But I have never consciously hurt anyone."