Rajesh Khanna became difficult to work with: Javed Akhtar says he preferred ‘unbelievably good actor’ Amitabh Bachchan

Javed Akhtar recalled how Rajesh Khanna was the biggest star in Hindi films before Amitabh Bachchan emerged as the ‘Angry Young Man’ of Bollywood.

Salim-Javed’s films such as Sholay greatly helped Amitabh Bachchan become one of the country’s biggest movie stars thanks to his ‘Angry Young Man’ roles. In an interview on the SAM YouTube channel, lyricist-screenwriter Javed Akhtar recalled how Rajesh Khanna was the biggest star in Bollywood for a 'short period', before 'unbelievably good actor' Amitabh took over the title.

Amitabh Bachchan (right) with Rajesh Khanna in a still from their 1973 film, Namak Haraam.

‘Rajesh Khanna was surrounded by sycophants'

He said, “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."

‘Give Amitabh any scene, he’ll do it with competence’

Javed Akhtar, who as part of Salim-Javed wrote scripts for the late actor's films such as Haathi Mere Saathi and Andaz, added, “If you’re working with actors like Amitabh Bachchan or Dilip Kumar, you know that you can put the weight on the actor, and the actor will carry it. Sometimes, when you feel that the actor has limited talent, you make the scene easier for him. But these actors could carry anything. Amitabh Bachchan, you give him any scene and he’ll do it with competence. You give him any line and he’ll make it natural."

Amitabh was a part of several Salim-Javed films including Sholay, Don and Deewaar among others. In a recent interview with NDTV, Salim recalled the time when Javed told him that he wanted to split. He went on to reveal that if there was one person who could have stopped that split, then it was Amitabh.

Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar returned to our screens with the Prime Video docu-series Angry Young Men recently, which left fans nostalgic.