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In a career spanning five decades, veteran actor Ranjeet has starred in over 500 films. He remains best known for playing negative characters. In his recent interview with Radio Nasha, Ranjeet spoke about the time his family didn’t approve of his career choices, and even threw him out of the house. The actor had to ask his co-star Rakhee to talk to his mother on his behalf.
Ranjeet played a negative role in the 1971 film Sharmeelee. In the film, a scene showed him assaulting Rakhee’s character. Seeing this, Ranjeet’s family walked out of the theatre, and later, asked the actor to leave the house. Recalling the story, he said in Hindi, “My mother said, ‘How dare you enter this house? You tear women’s clothes, what kind of work is this?’ She told me to get out of the house.”
Sharing how he narrated the incident to Rakhee, Ranjeet said, “Rakhee ji was so beautiful. My mother started crying after looking at her. She said, ‘Satyanash ho mera putar da. Mein maafi mangti hu tujhse (To hell with my son. I apologise to you).’ Rakhee made her understand that we are good friends. Then they accepted.”
When the host asked Ranjeet if he left the iconic role of Gabbar Singh in Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay to honour his friendship with actor Danny Denzongpa, the actor said, “This is true. I was shooting in Bangalore for another film. Danny was in Afghanistan shooting for Feroz Khan’s Dharmatma. He had a special song in the film with Hema Malini. Those days schedules of actors were not fixed. So, Feroz Khan told Danny, ‘What will you do in Sholay? There are three main actors in the film – Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjeev Kumar – you will be in the 4th or 5th role. I am giving you a song with Hema Malini in this film.’ So, Danny felt responsible that he should continue with Dharmatma as Sholay had not begun. But he couldn’t say no to Sholay. In those days, communication was difficult.”
Explaining how the offer to play Gabbar came to him, Ranjeet said, “So, the offer to play Gabbar for Sholay came to me. The production people of Sholay came to me and told me to do Gabbar’s role. Danny and I had worked in a few films by that time. I told them, ‘Danny ka ghar mein aana jana hai (Danny comes to my house) so I won’t be able to do this film because he is my friend. I saw a picture that said that Danny is caught up in Afghanistan and I took the film away from him. So, I asked them that if Danny says, ‘I don’t want to do this film, give it to somebody else,’ then I don’t mind. At least I should have a talk with him, and if he agrees, then I will do the film. But they could not wait because the film involved so many big stars. So, this role was destined for Amjad Khan.”
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