‘You are very ugly’: What ‘superstar’ Hema Malini told Shah Rukh Khan before signing him for first film because ‘Aamir and Salman said no’

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He said, “That was the day I realised that I was in the industry. Hema Malini called up my house, and my father picked up the phone. She introduced herself and asked him, ‘Is Viveck Vaswani there?’ He asked her, ‘Hema Malini who?’ and she said, ‘Hema Malini, the superstar.’ He came and woke me up, and he literally picked me up by my collar and said that Hema Malini is on the phone.”

Viveck continued and said that Malini enquired about Shah Rukh and wished to speak with him regarding a project. “She said, ‘That boy Shah Rukh Khan, is he still sleeping at your place?’ I said ‘yes’, and she told me to wake him up. Then I picked Shah Rukh by the collar, and he went and talked to her. She told him to come by the house at 5 pm and put the phone down,” recalled Viveck.

Shah Rukh Khan, Divya Bharati, Dimple Kapadia, and Hema Malini at the premiere of Dil Aashna Hai. (Photo: Express Archive)

Viveck and Shah Rukh did go to Malini’s house, and the producer admitted that even though he was very nervous, he did his best trying to sell Shah Rukh to her. He said, “We went to her house like two little mice, and someone was sitting in front of us reading the newspaper. We didn’t recognise him, but when he put the paper down, we realised that it was Dharmendra. Hema Ji came and told Shah Rukh, ‘But you’re very ugly.’ I asked her, ‘Why do you want him?’ She said, ‘Aamir Khan and Salman Khan have said no.’ I told her that Rakesh Roshan and Ramesh Sippy had signed him, and that was a lie because when I need to give people careers, I can lie like a king.”

He added, “She said, ‘I will pay you Rs 50k, and I am Hema Malini, so there are no questions.’ I mean, she already had Jitendra, Mithun Chakraborty, Amrita Singh, Dimple Kapadia, and Kabir Bedi. Though Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman was always his launch film, the first was Dil Aashna Hai, and the first shoot was King Uncle by Rakesh Roshan in Nairobi.”

Directed by Malini, the cast of Dil Aashna Hai included Shah Rukh Khan, Jeetendra, Dimple Kapadia, Amrita Singh, Mithun Chakraborty, and Divya Bharti. It was released in 1992.