Gone are the days when a diminutive hero was shown beating a villain twice his size. The fights these days are between equals. The hero must meet his match in the villain. And that is what is happening with Zayed Khan.

The actor was actually forced to put on more weight as he was not looking macho enough against his villain on screen. For the climactic battle in Apoorva Lakhia's Mission Istanbul, the reed-thin Zayed put on 11 kgs and weighed 75 kgs. All this because he had to take on the baddie Niketan Dheer, who is 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 86 kgs. The director thought that a little fat Zayed would be able to do justice to the final fight sequences where the hero and the villain come into the same frame. Zayed was excited when he was told about the climax shots and its requirements. His director too pushed him to the limit. Two days before the scene, he gave Zayed the picture of a guy, six feet four in height and built like a rock. He told the actor that this was the man he had to fight. At first Zayed did not take him seriously as he plays a journalist in the film. So Zayed put on weight and toned his body to play a combative journalist. Besides putting on weight, Zayed has also done heart-in-mouth kind of stunts for the movie, which included jumping down a high-rise. He is believed to have actually hid the facts about the stunts from his family. Mission Istanbul also stars Vivek Oberoi, Suniel Shetty and Shreya Saran. Abhishek Bachchan is set to make a special appearance in the film.