Veteran screenwriter Javed Akhtar recently shared his thoughts on the challenges of working with Rajesh Khanna, one of Bollywood’s biggest stars. Akhtar revealed that, over time, Rajesh Khanna became difficult to work with due to his unpredictable behavior and lack of discipline on set. Despite Khanna’s stardom and initial popularity, Akhtar found it challenging to collaborate with the actor.
During a discussion, Akhtar expressed his preference, “Those were the times when a child born in India would say ‘Rajesh Khanna’ first and then ‘mumma, papa’. But it was a short period. Someone, there came a time when we realised that it would be difficult for us to work together because he was surrounded by so many people, so many sycophants and yes men, it was difficult to work with him. So, we parted ways. Then we became friendly, and we did a film also much later. But the kind of films that we were writing, and the kind of films that we had in our mind, were much more suitable for an actor like Amitabh Bachchan although he was at that time not a superstar, to say the least, but he was an unbelievably good actor. He was the man who we felt would be able to play our Vijay.”
Amitabh appeared in a number of Salim-Javed movies, such as Don, Deewaar, and Sholay. Salim recounted the moment Javed told him he wanted to get away in a recent interview with NDTV. He continued by saying that Amitabh was the one who had the ability to prevent that separation.
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