Aamir Khan had two conditions before signing Dil Chahta Hai, says Farhan Akhtar: ‘I went to him because I had no choice’

When Farhan Akhtar was trying to cast his debut film Dil Chahta Hai, he met a few actors who just rejected his proposal. But once he met with Akshaye Khanna, there was a ray of hope. Farhan shared, at the recently concluded Waves Summit, that Akshaye was the first actor to come on board out of the three leading stars and at that time, Akshaye was going to play the role of Aakash, the role that was eventually played by Aamir Khan. Farhan shared that when he met Aamir, it was for Sid’s role, that was eventually played by Akshaye, but Aamir placed his condition before the first time filmmaker.

Calling Akshaye an “incredible guy who has a lot of integrity”, he recalled that he met the actor for Aakash’s role and he readily agreed. “I never thought Aamir would say yes so I never went to him. It sounds frivolous and kind of patronising now, forgive me because that’s not my intention, but I went to him eventually because I had no choice. And I went with the feeling that he is going to say no but since I haven’t met him, let me go and meet him,” he shared. Farhan said that after Aamir met with him, he liked the film but he had two conditions before he could come on board.

“He said I will do this film but I have some conditions. So the dialogues were in English at that time so he said that you get the dialogue draft in Hindi because right now, you have written it in English. I want to know if this humour will work in Hindi. He said if I like the Hindi draft, I don’t want to play Sid, I want to play Aakash,” he shared. Farhan prepared his draft in Hindi and Aamir liked it but the next obstacle was how he would tell Akshaye about this, as the actor had already agreed to play Aakash.

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He shared his situation with Aamir and the actor seemed very confident that Akshaye would be okay to play another role. “I met Akshaye and I told him ‘Aamir is really keen to do the film but he wants to do Aakash’. Akshaye said ‘you came and met me and told me you want me to be Aakash. If you tell me you want me to be Sid, I don’t care. I will do any role but I want to be in this movie,” he shared and added, “I am always indebted to him for being so gracious.”

Dil Chahta Hai also starred Saif Ali Khan, Dimple Kapadia and Preity Zinta.