Rajesh Khanna fans are celebrating the actor’s 83rd birth anniversary. Following his debut in Aakhri Khat (1966), Khanna gave Bollywood hits like Aradhana, The Train, Kati Patang and Anand during his dominant
run in the early 1970s.
After the declaration of emergency in 1975, Khanna began to experience his downfall. His bad habits, coupled with a damaged reputation, put an end to his career for good.
Rajesh Khanna Could Not Keep Up With Time: Sharmila Tagore
Rajesh Khanna’s star power started to diminish after Amitabh Bachchan’s hits like Sholay and Deewaar came out. Khnna, on the other hand, refused to cater to the demands of the time. “Kaka either couldn’t or didn’t reinvent himself to remain contemporary, so much so that he became almost a caricature of himself and people began to mock him,” actress Sharmila Tagore said in ‘Dark Star: The Loneliness of Being Rajesh Khanna.
Meanwhile, some filmmakers started to raise questions about Khanna’s unprofessionalism. Yash Chopra said he could not deal with his “superstar tantrums.”
Dimple Kapadia Said Rajesh Khanna Was ‘Pathetic’ In The 1980s
Rajesh Khanna had it rough in the 1980s. In addition to unsuccessful films, his marriage to Dimple Kapadia almost fell apart. “When a successful man goes to pieces, his frustration engulfs the entire surroundings,” Kapadia told India Today in 1985. She said it was “pathetic” to see Khanna wait for collection figures at the end of the week. However, the people “didn’t have the guts to come and tell him,” Kapadia had recalled.
Rajesh finally agreed to star in Mohan Kumar’s Avtaar, which came out in 1983. He played an old man with grey hair and fully grown children. To everyone’s surprise, Avtaar was as successful as Amitabh’s Coolie or Sunny Deol’s debut film Betaab. Khanna once again proved that he still got it.
Rajesh Khanna Admitted He Had ‘Bad Habits’
Rajesh Khanna had realised that most of his films no longer did well at the box office because of his unimpressive acting and “bad habits”. “I know over the past few years the lean patch in my career was attributed to my bad acting or bad habits,” the actor had said in ‘Rajesh Khanna: The Untold Story of India’s First Superstar.
Although he “was often advised to change,” Rajesh Khanna admitted that he “did nothing like that”. His comeback with Avtaar was short-lived. Khanna soon returned to his old ways. Salim Khan said Khanna was not very eager to “look within to evaluate what was going wrong and where” when his movies started to flop.
“He started blaming others. He used to feel that there was some conspiracy against him,” Khan added.
Rajesh Khanna Called Journalist Gargi In A drunken state
Rajesh Khanna later decided to try his luck at production. As a producer, Khanna worked with actress Tina Munim, director Shakti Samantha, playback singer Kishore Kumar and music composer RD Burman. He produced movies like Alag Alag (1985) and Jai Shiv Shankar (1990). However, with little success, he soon moved to politics.
He became a member of Parliament for the Indian National Congress from the New Delhi constituency. While with the INC, Khanna one night called journalist Gargi Parsai in a drunken state. This happened around the same time Khanna hailed reporters as “our link with the public” in an interview with India Today.
“We can’t afford to be rude to reporters,” he had said.
Rajesh Khanna’s bad reputation
Sachin Pilgaonkar worked with Rajesh Khanna in Avtaar. He said Rajesh’s reputation was ruined and the actor could not recover from it.
“Our industry functions on image. If the image is bad, it is very difficult to change it. Rajesh Khanna, towards the later phase, tried to change, but perhaps it was too late,” he had said.
When Rajesh appeared in an erotic pose with an actress less than half his age for the poster of a film named Wafaa in 2008, the audience was left in shock.
He attempted to clarify that he was adapting to the times, but it simply came off as a desperate attempt to stay relevant. Rajesh Khanna passed away at age 69 on July 18, 2012.
