Shabana Azmi has opened up about the experience of working with late actor Shashi Kapoor. In an interview with Zoom, the veteran actor revealed that she had been his fan since the age of 9, adding that he was 'mean' to her, but actually ended up helping her out. She called him 'crazy' as she recalled working with him in Fakira. Shabana said Shashi scolded her after she started crying because she did not want to shoot an intimate scene with him. 

'I had tears in my eyes'

Shabana said, “That was his way of showing affection. He was crazy. I will give you an example: We were shooting for Fakira, and the song was Dil Mein Tujhe Bithakar. Now, I went on set before he arrived, and Satyanarayan ji was doing the choreography. I saw that the moves were very intimate. I was very young at that time, and I had tears in my eyes. I left the set, and my heart was thudding because I really didn’t want to do those shots.”

She added, “So I went in, and I told my hairdresser that I couldn’t do those shots, and I started crying. Suddenly there was a heavy knocking on the door, comes Shashi Kapoor, he was like, ‘What’s wrong with you’, so I said, ‘I can’t do those scenes’, he said, ‘Why, when you became an actress, didn’t you realise this when you told your mother you want to become an actress, stupid girl’, and he left. I looked at my hairdresser, and I said, ‘How mean is he? Look at the way he’s speaking to me.’ And then, after half an hour, I went on the set, and he had every move changed. This was the kind of person he was."

Shabana on being a Shashi Kapoor fan

The actor further spoke about being a fan of Shashi Kapoor since she was 9. Shabana said that when she was in school, he would come with his family every Sunday to Prithviraj Kapoor’s house and Prithviraj Kapoor was her 'immediate neighbour'.

She said she used to save her pocket money and buy a black-and-white photo of Shashi and every Sunday she would go and get it signed by the actor. Shabana added he’s the only person whose autograph she took on his photograph. She added that when she was cast opposite him in Hira Aur Patthar (1977), it was 'completely unbelievable'.

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