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‘Rekha only troubled those who didn’t pay her’, Rakesh Roshan says people warned him about her tantrums when he cast her: ‘She is very clever’

Rakesh Roshan said that people warned him when he was going to cast Rekha in Khoon Bhari Maang but he had a candid chat with her and clarified the misunderstanding.

As Rekha celebrates her 71st birthday today, a look at her extraordinary journey.

As Rekha turns 71 today, here's how she learnt the craft while watching and learning from her co-stars especially Amitabh Bachchan. (Photo: IMDb)

Veteran actor Rekha has been a part of the movies since the 1970s and over the years, she became known for her graceful screen presence, elegant dancing style and her stellar performances. However, as Rekha got more and more popular, many industry insiders tried pulling her down when they started gossiping about her unprofessional attitude but filmmaker Rakesh Roshan has a different story to tell. Rakesh shared in a new interview that many people warned him about casting Rekha in his film Khoon Bhari Maang.

In a chat with ANI, Rakesh spoke about his association with Rekha and shared, “Rekha has a quality which very few heroines have. She is different in all her films. I did a couple of films with her as an actor – Khoobsurat, Aakraman and Aurat. When I went to her with a mother’s role in Khoon Bhari Maang as a director, people warned me against her. They said you are making a film with her, she never comes on time, always runs away before time.”

When Rakesh heard such gossip, he decided to be upfront with her and discussed what he had been hearing. “I always heard these rumours about her, but whenever I worked with her, I never witnessed any such thing. When I went to Rekha as a director, I told her, ‘Listen, this is only my second film, and it is a difficult subject. It is a woman-oriented film. I am taking a risk with this film. The story was such that in the climax, the wife kills her husband. I asked her clearly, ‘You won’t give me any trouble me na?’ She was like, ‘What are you even saying? Have I ever done this? I only trouble people who don’t pay me or they don’t fulfill their commitments’. I said okay,” he recalled.

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Many years later, Rakesh approached Rekha for a role in Koi Mil Gaya. He shared, “I went to narrate the story to her. After narrating the story, I asked her, ‘How is it?’. She is very clever. She quickly said, ‘You are not narrating this story to me because you want my feedback, you are narrating this to me because you want me to play the role of the mother.’ I said, ‘Yes’.”

Previously, veteran actor Ranjeet said that he signed Rekha for his directorial film but eventually asked her to return the signing amount, fearing her tantrums. He told Vickey Lalwani in an interview, “I wanted to shoot a couple of songs at night, but she insisted we shoot them during the day. I clearly told her, I was not making this film for her but myself. She even had issues with the choreographer. We changed that too. I wanted to shoot my film outside Mumbai, at a farm house, but she refused to leave Mumbai and insisted that she wanted to come back to her house every night. Very politely, I asked her to return me the signing amount. I said, ‘I can’t do this picture with you.’ It all happened on a friendly note.”

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