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Ever since the unfortunate passing of actor Dharmendra, tributes have been pouring in from all over the country, including several anecdotes from the actor’s storied career. Anil Sharma, who most famously collaborated with the actor in his 2007 film Apne, has also been sharing his memories of the late actor. During a recent interview, Sharma shared tales from his days as an assistant director and how magnanimous Dharmendra really was as a human being.
While talking to Vickey Lalwani on his YouTube channel, Sharma recalled many of his favourite stories of working with Dharmendra. He shared an interesting anecdote from the set of BR Chopra’s The Burning Train. He recalled that the star-studded film, which starred Parveen Babi, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Vinod Khanna, among many others, was being shot in Delhi, and in a particular sequence, all of them were needed on set at the same time. Anil, who was the assistant director, was tasked with the responsibility of getting everyone on set at the same time but without his knowledge, Parveen slipped away.
He recalled, “Chopra ji asked me, ‘How could you be so irresponsible?'” At this point, Dharmendra stepped in, and Sharma lauded the actor for doing so. “Dharamji was listening to all this, and he intervened. He said, ‘If she has gone off to meet someone, are you going to drag her out there? It’s not his fault’. He called me a hard-working guy and said, ‘This man sleeps at 2 am and then wakes up again at 5 am.’ He had been noticing my timings, and he didn’t like the fact that I was getting scolded. No actor intervenes when something like this is happening to an assistant, but he did; that’s Dharmendra,” said Sharma.
The Gadar 2 director added that Dharmendra was helpful towards everyone and even helped a lot of small-time regional filmmakers. He recalled that Dharmendra would often shoot for producers whose films were stuck or they needed a helping hand, at night, without charging any money.
He said, “Dharam ji has done a film with every single person, and he has done all types of films. He has helped so many people. People used to ask him to do scenes for their Punjabi films after 9 pm, once he was done with his schedule. They used to say, ‘Paaji, mera ghar chal jayega, meri picture bik jayegi’ (My movie will be able to sell, and I’ll be able to run my household). Dharam ji used to do all those films for free, and he used to tell them to come wherever he was shooting and work with them for a couple of hours.”
Dharmendra passed away at the age of 89 on November 24.
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