'I always considered him as a director, never an actor. Do you know he always considered other actors for his films first?' 'For Pyaasa, he wanted to cast Dilip saab; only when Dilip saab refused did Guru Duttji decide to do the role himself.'
'Everyone at Guru Dutt Productions would get monthly salaries. Waheeda didi would get Rs 2,500 per month. And that was the reason why she left.'
'The industry has never accepted me.' 'When I was shooting Aashiqui, I would hear comments like, "Yeh toh bahut lambi hai. Heroine nahin dikhti hai".' 'Aashiqui became such a big hit, and you know how the industry is.' 'You have success, then you have everything.'
Kareena has been a leading lady now for 25 years, Deepika for almost two decades and Alia for over a decade. Dinesh Raheja chronicles the changing ways Bollywood has treated actor-moms.
'Dharmendra was paying a little extra attention to me and she didn't like it.'
'Those were not kind days for a woman with a break-up. The world has changed; today, nobody cares.'
'I am smitten with Tokyo's eclectic mix of modern cosmopolitanism and old world Japan,' confesses Dinesh Raheja.
'I saw Bimal Roy's Devdas again a few years ago, almost 50 years after it had been made.' 'I found it very intelligently made; the scenes flowed so beautifully.' 'There is just one scene with both Suchitra Sen and me in the film, and it's beautiful.'
'Even today, though my hair looks different, people recognise me wherever I go. They come up and say 'Aap Maine Pyar Kiya mein thi, na?' I think it's going to follow me to the grave.'
Today's Hindi film mothers are younger, trendier, more mischievous. But, truth be told, says Dinesh Raheja, I still do miss sometimes the comforting presence of the trad mother.
'K Asifsaab was very definite that 'woh Hindustan ka honewala Badshah hai -- woh gana nahin gayega.'
'Alaya has kept her career disconnected from me in every way.' 'She wanted to achieve success by herself without any help or interference.'
'I didn't like doing jhatak-mataks. I would subconsciously start feeling, 'Oh my God, my makeup man and my driver will be watching this.''
'Shreya (Ghoshal) ma'am said she hasn't heard a voice like mine before, and added that even in the future, there won't be another voice like mine.'
'Dharmendra, Shashi Kapoor and I were inseparable while we struggled together.' 'When a disillusioned Dharmendra was packing his bags to return home, I prevailed upon him to give himself two months.' 'Five days later, he was signed for Shola Aur Shabnam and I signed Picnic.'
Dinesh Raheja looks back at Manoj Kumar's brilliant 1964 thriller Woh Kaun Thi, and explains just what made it an audio-visual treat.
Shaheed was Manoj Kumar's first patriotic success. This small-budget black-and-white film had enormous impact, besides laying the foundation for Manoj's famous flag-waving Mr Bharat image that was strengthened by a string of subsequent films like Upkar, Purab Aur Paschim and Kranti.
'My mom had told me a great deal about Meena Kumari and how she could make a tear drop at the right moment. A legend who was in total control. But when I finally met her, I saw a frail, shrivelled and petite woman -- just a bag of bones. Very tiny. She was dying.'
The Bachchan family have this knack of going out of their way to make you feel extremely comfortable.
'Reena stayed in the next building. We fell in love but had to meet secretly because her parents didn't approve of me.' 'I would always be afraid that her parents would get her married off to somebody else.'
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