Shashi Kapoor: The quiet showman

Though many feel it has been long overdue,

recognition has finally come for Shashi Kapoor, the
often underrated actor who acted in bad films so that
he could make good cinema
Ranjita Ganesan March 28, 2015 Last Updated at
00:29 IST
In the late 1970s, when the Hindi film Junoon was to
be shot, its cast and crew were in for a pleasant
surprise. Shashi Kapoor, the handsome actor who
turned producer with this venture, had arranged for
everyone to stay at the Clarks Avadh in Lucknow for
two full months. The motley set of established actors,
newcomers and technicians had hardly experienced
such treatment. "He got rid of the hierarchy we were
used to in mainstream cinema and made it
democratic. It felt like a family," says Govind Nihalani
who was cinematographer for the project. It was a
quality that remained consistent in all films produced
by Kapoor. Then again, the charming star had often
stated that when he made cinema, it would be very
different from the commercial films in which he acted.

The Dadasaheb Phalke award, which 77-year-old

Kapoor is set to receive in May, comes with a swarn
kamal or golden lotus, a cash prize of Rs 10 lakh and
a shawl. More important, it will bring recognition for
his contribution to cinema that many feel has been
overlooked for too long. Within film circles, people are
unanimous in their praise for the veteran actor. "After
the announcement of any award there are always
murmurings of discontent," says Shabana Azmi. "It

shows the respect the film industry has for him that
the announcement has been met with joy in all
quarters."

Acting was among the first skills Kapoor learnt,

having been groomed in the theatre starting from the
age of four by his father, the illustrious Prithviraj.
"They cast him in whatever small role suited him. He
was thrown to the lions, and not meted out any
special treatment," says film journalist Bhawana
Somaaya who interviewed him several times. Kapoor
followed his brother Raj into the moving pictures in
the late 1940s. Most famously, he was the child actor
who played a younger Raj in Aag and Awaara. His first
full-fledged roles as lead were in the 1961 films Char
Diwari and Dharmputra. He followed this up with
more than 150 films until the late 1990s. Here too, his
approach was democratic as he chose films in Hindi
and English, took on big and small parts and shuffled
comfortably between mainstream and arthouse.

He was the only actor at the time to consistently

appear in international films. Kapoor first starred in
The Householder, a partnership between director
James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant. He then
worked for their Merchant Ivory Productions in films
such as Shakespeare Wallah and In Custody. Other
directors like Guy Green and Conrad Rooks signed him
on too. His fan base, as director Shyam Benegal
recalls, spread to North Africa in Algeria and Morocco.
Illinois-based Beth Watkins, author of the "Beth Loves
Bollywood" blog, is a self-confessed mega-fan of the

actor because he can be "funny, romantic,

authoritative, or vulnerable equally believably". When
Kapoor finally retired from acting in 1999, it was with
an international film called Side Streets.

In India, these achievements were overshadowed by

the roles he played in loud Hindi films. He did projects
as lead - take Sharmilee and Jab Jab Phool Khile - and
as supporting lead, for instance, in Kaala Patthar.
Kapoor often appeared alongside Amitabh Bachchan,
memorably in Deewar and Do Aur Do Paanch. He even
played the famous detective Feluda, a character from
Satyajit Ray's novels, in a Hindi television film made
by Ray's son, Sandip.

Kapoor expertly balanced his two lives in theatre and

cinema. The Kapoor family ran travelling stage shows
in the 1950s when Britain's Geoffrey Kendal and his
Shakespeareana Company were also touring India.
Kapoor joined the Kendals when they needed male
cast members and soon fell in love with the elder
daughter, Jennifer. According to the memoirs of
Felicity Kendal (Kapoor's sister-in-law), the idea of
their marriage met with opposition from both
families. Jennifer soon left the company and an
outraged father, moving to Mumbai with her young
husband, who was known as a rising movie actor
here. The couple had three children. The eldest,
Kunal, heads Prithvi Theatre. Karan, next in line,
started out as a model before turning to photography.
Kapoor's daughter, Sanjna, is an active theatre
personality.

Unlike the other Kapoors, he had a slender frame

paired with twinkling eyes and the hint of a dimple. In
Benegal's opinion, he is the best looking actor of his
time and perhaps all time in Indian cinema. After
Jennifer died from cancer in 1984, a heartbroken
Kapoor's health began to decline and he began
gaining weight. "There are few people who
experience genuine love and those who do, don't
recover," Kunal once said in an interview with Mumbai
Mirror.

Kapoor believed in total surrender to the director's

vision, even trusting relative newcomers, says
Nihalani. But lofty praise seems to have come from
his father-in-law after watching Shakespeare Wallah,
starring his younger daughter and Kapoor. On her
blog, Watkins reproduced a letter Geoffrey wrote to
Felicity: "You are damn good, but Shashi is wasted.
The only shot worth seeing is the shot of him by
himself, when everyone else has gone to bed, a real
winner. He should go into films in English with foreign
directors who know how to exploit him." Kapoor
would, of course, go on to do just that.

As the roles in Hindi films failed to satisfy him,

Kapoor launched a production company called
Filmvalas. He wanted to replicate brother Raj's
success in making cinema that appealed to a variety
of viewers. Kapoor started with Junoon, directed by
Benegal, after which, the two joined hands for
Kalyug. He had a penchant for encouraging talent. He

invited Nihalani to make Vijeyta and introduced

Aparna Sen as director with 36 Chowringhee Lane.
After Utsav, the period film directed by Girish Karnad,
went over budget, Kapoor found it difficult to
continue producing films.

While spending time at studios where his films were

being made, he would visit Juhu to supervise plans to
create a brick-and-mortar space for the Prithvi
Theatre. Somaaya remembers watching him and
Jennifer in discussion there. "It was just a piece of
land then. They would meet the architect, explain
how it should look and where the audience would sit."

Director Sudhir Mishra, who spent time with him in

Paris during an industry event, had tweeted fervent
praise for Kapoor almost as a premonition, days
before the award for the actor was announced.
Kapoor was known to be a regular at film festivals. He
told Filmfare in a 1970s interview that he preferred
taking his family to Shamiana for a film and coffee to
parties with colleagues. There were other little things
too. He sought perfection in daily conversation, for
instance, correcting Somaaya's Hindi diction if she
said "faansi" instead of "phaansi" or "haan" instead of
"ji". When a young fan approached him at the Prithvi
Theatre asking if she "can have an autograph,
please", he replied with a smile, "Yes, but ask me
again. And this time ask if you 'may' have one."
Kapoor, who is now unwell, lives nearby in Juhu and is
occasionally seen at the theatre in the evenings.

He will be the third in the family to receive the award,

following his father, Prithviraj and brother, Raj. "He
belongs to the last breed of great cinema people who
put money where their mouth was and where their
beliefs were," says Mishra, likening him to Bimal Roy,
Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor. Indeed, quite like Raj, the
younger Kapoor put all his earnings from acting jobs
back into making films and keeping Prithvi theatre
alive. As Mishra further observes, "If that is not
philanthropy, I don't know what is."

onfirming this news on a microblogging site, Rishi

Kapoor wrote, Yessssssss! Shashi Kapoor to get the
prestigious Dada Saheb Phalke award for contribution
to Indian Cinema. Well deserved uncle. God Bless!
Third Padma Bhushan and third Phalke award in the
family. Prithviraj Kapoor and Raj Kapoor being the
other recipients he further added.
Prithiviraj Kapoor has received the Dada Saheb
Phalke award in 1971 & Raj Kapoor received it in
1987.

Shashi Kapoor, the perfect partner

Bangalore Mirror Bureau | Mar 28, 2015, 10.14 PM IST
I think he's completely deserving of it, but Shashi
Kapoor might seem an unusual choice for the
Dadasaheb Phalke award.

Unlike his larger-than-life father, Prithviraj, whose

grand passion for theatre and cinema started the

Kapoor clan off on their path to show business, and
unlike his two elder brothers Raj and Shammi, both of
whom - though not comparable - carved out distinct,
individual niches for themselves in an unforgiving film
industry, Shashi has always been the perfect foil.
Never an actor who sought to have the spotlight
turned solely on him, he has always been someone
who gave himself wholly and freely in partnerships.
And rarely, in the world as in cinema, is that quality
given the applause it deserves.
One of his earliest romantic pairings, with the lovely
late actress Nanda, lasted through the whole decade
of the 60s, with seven films, starting with Char Diwari
(1961) and ending with Rootha Na Karo (1970). The
most successful of these, of course, was Jab Jab Phool
Khilein (1965), in which he went from being a
carefree Kashmiri boatman singing Pardesiyon se na
ankhiyan milana to being the wealthy Nanda's
uncomfortably suited-booted husband, singing Yahan
main ajnabi hoon at the sort of piano-centred party
that Hindi cinema so often used to depict the terrible
un-Indian debaucheries of the rich. In an interview in
the 90s, Shashi said Nanda was his favourite heroine.
Nanda, who was by far the bigger star when they
started acting together, returned the compliment. The
figure of the ghuta-hua poorer man to the little rich
girl of 60s cinema was one Shashi repeated the
following year, in Waqt, where he played Sharmila
Tagore's educated-but-poor lover who must work as a
driver to support her.
A very different sort of partnership, with Amitabh
Bachchan is, of course, legendary. The two did so

many films together that Jaya Bhaduri once

apparently referred to Shashi as her "soutan",
because he spent more time with her husband than
she did. The Amitabh-Shashi on-screen relationship
ran the gamut, from estranged brothers (most
famously in the 1975 classic Deewar, but also in other
films like 1979's Suhaag), to servant and master
(Namak Halal, 1982), blue collar worker and white
collar boss (Kala Patthar, 1979), sometimes even sortof-rivals for the love of a woman (Kabhie Kabhie).
Much as I loved watching Shashi's sunny, ethical
engineer play off the brooding Amitabh in the
fictionalised prevention of a real-life mining tragedy
that was Kala Patthar, my favourite of their
performances together is probably the ridiculously
enjoyable Do Aur Do Paanch, in which they play rival
thugs who've taken jobs at a school, pretending to be
music teacher and sports teacher respectively, in
order to kidnap a little boy.
Amitabh being the spotlight-grabber that he is, it
took a persona as secure as Shashi's to remain
completely unthreatened. Which he did, despite the
conspiracy theories floated in film magazines of the
time, about Shashi's role having been cut down to
size in Deewaar. In a short but rather remarkable
1975 interview to Bikram Vohra in Filmfare, Shashi
categorically refused to add any fuel to that fire:
"[I]t's ridiculous to say that Amitabh's role [in
Deewaar] was engineered to show me up. After all,
before I took the role I knew I was playing the second
lead. So the idea of a conspiracy against Shashi
Kapoor is Bullsh*t. And in any case why do we have
this hang-up in our country? About always coming out
as heroes. In the West great names like Olivier,

Burton, Harrison frequently played second roles.

There's nothing demeaning about that."
Another of Shashi's most interesting - if somewhat
unlikely - romantic pairings was with Shabana Azmi.
The films they did together that remain embedded in
my mind are both literary adaptations. They played
husband and wife in the memorable Junoon (1978),
Shyam Benegal's adaptation of Ruskin Bond's A Flight
of Pigeons, and many years later, in the 1993 In
Custody (Muhafiz), the Merchant-Ivory adaptation of
Anita Desai's novel by the same name. Shabana plays
the neglected, petulant wife in both films, but
Shashi's roles could not be more stunningly different:
a fiery young 1857 mutineer called Javed, and an
aged, overweight poet whose world is crumbling. As
an aside: it's funny to think of the fact of these actors
as people who've known each other for ever - that
same Bikram Vohra interview from 1975 has Shashi
tossing off a remark about how he told Shabana that
she's a great actress but not very good-looking (as
opposed to Parveen Babi, to whom he apparently said
the opposite).
But perhaps Shashi's oddest and most interesting film
pairings were with his wife Jennifer Kendall. The first
one I recall is also in Junoon, where as the troubled
Javed, Shashi becomes obsessed with the teenaged
Ruth (an exquisitely young Nafisa Ali) and his
potentially dangerous attentions are only kept at bay
by Jennifer, playing Ruth's mother Miriam. The second
is in the 1970 Merchant Ivory production Bombay
Talkie, where he played a Bombay film star who has
an affair with the visiting American novelist Lucia
Lane (Jennifer). These were not performances that let

on that the two actors were, in fact, husband and

wife.
don't know very much about their real-life
relationship, but the same 1975 interview paints a
picture of the Jennifer-Shashi household as one where
Shashi was forced to eat organic breakfasts at 7.30
am, and occasionally, at least, have vegetarian stints.
This seemed unbelievable to the Filmfare journalist in
1975. But it fits perfectly with Sanjana Kapoor's
memory of growing up in a house where three things
were banned: aerated cold drinks, comics and film
magazines. Clearly, Shashi's lifelong ability to keep
the Hindi film world he was born into at a safe, sane,
distance owed something to Jennifer. But that would
need another column.

A quiet half century

Actor Shashi Kapoor who has completed 50 years in
films goes down memory lane in a chat with Ranjan
Das Gupta

Dharmendra's golden jubilee in films received a lot of

media coverage as did Manoj Kumar's. Astonishingly
their contemporary Shashi Kapoor, who also
completed his golden jubilee around the same time,
has been ignored both by the film industry and the
media.

Beginning as a child artist in Raj Kapoor's Aag and

Awara, Shashi Kapoor started his career as a hero

with Char Diwari in 1960. The film's editor,

Hrishikesh Mukherjee, predicted a bright future for
him. Through thick and thin, his main support was his
wife Jennifer Kendal. Her death was an irreparable
loss and Shashi kapoor lost all interest in work after
her demise.

When I met him recently, Shashi Kapoor sat silently in

his wheelchair after receiving the Padma Vibhushan.
Seeing him smile, memories of a golden era throng
the mind. May be the media does not feel I deserve
any coverage. After all I am a flop actor, producer and
director, he says.

String of hits
Why does he consider himself a flop? What about the
string of hits like Jab Jab Phool Khile, Waqt,
Haseena Maan Jayegi, Sharmilee and Kabhi
Kabhi? After a brief lull, Shashi Kapoor breaks the
silence, I may have given hits, but what are they
compared to the stupendous success achieved by my
father Prithviraj Kapoor and brothers Raj and Shammi
Kapoor? As a producer I tried my best to make offbeat
and good cinema. None was a hit. If a film does not
connect with the audience it carries no meaning.

Shashi Kapoor spent all his earnings from commercial

pot boilers in producing memorable films like
Junoon, Kalyug and Vijeta under his banner
Filmvalas. He gave Aparna Sen her coveted break as a
director with the evergreen 36 Chowringhee Lane.

The films received critical acclaim and awards but a

flop is a flop is a flop. I tried my hand at fantasy with
Ajooba. When it bit the dust, I understood I had had
my innings.

After Dev Anand, Shashi Kapoor ranks the second

most romantic actor on the Hindi screen. His
devastating good looks backed by his toothy smile,
charm and effortless performance saw his popularity
soar in the 1960s, 1970s and even the 1980s.
However, Shashi Kapoor does not consider himself
great. Chabi Biswas, Dilip Kumar, Raj Kapoor and
Uttam Kumar were truly great actors. Balraj Sahni
was versatile and honest. In the past four decades,
Amitabh Bachhan has been the biggest star actor
with whom I acted in Deewar', Kabhi Kabhi',
Trishul', Kala Pathhar', Silsila' ...

Mala Sinha, Sadhana, Asha Parekh, Sharmila Tagore,

Hema Malini and Shabana Azmi... Shashi Kapoor has
acted with all of them successfully. Of his heroines,
whom does he remember the most? Nanda, is the
spontaneous reply. She acted with me in my first film
Char Diwari'. Nanda excelled in a variety of
characters; she performed with dignity. Her
movements in the song sequence Yeh Shama in Jab
Jab Phool Khile' were imitated even by Sridevi later.
Sadhana was initially hesitant to act with a new hero
like me but we developed a good rapport while
working in Bimal Roy's, Prem Patra'. Sadhana's eyes
and smile were her assets.

Unforgettables
Of course the best of Shashi Kapoor came in the films
produced and directed by Ismail Merchant. Shashi
Kapoor - according to the late Satyajit Ray - was
unforgettable in Householder, Shakespearewala,
Pretty Polly, Bombay Talkies and In Custody.
Remember the suave anti-hero in The Deceivers
opposite Pierce Brosnan? For once Shashi Kapoor
flashes his famous smile and recollects, In one scene
I had to look up straight into Brosnan's eyes and
smile. Brosnan asked me to look around after looking
up and then into his eyes. The advice yielded brilliant
histrionic results.

Until now Shashi Kapoor remains the only actor to

have refused a National Award for Dharam Putra in
1961. He answers, I did not consider my
performance worth an award. I did receive the
National Award for New Delhi Times in 1986. Do
you remember the scene where I dream of running
through burning debris and then break down in
Sharmila Tagore's lap? That was instrumental in me
receiving my recognition.

Shashi Kapoor
Born

Balbir Raj Prithviraj Kapoor

18 March 1938 (age 77)[1]

Calcutta, Bengal Presidency, British India
(now Kolkata, West Bengal, India)

Other names Balbir

Years active 19411999 (retired)
Parent(s)

Prithviraj Kapoor (Father)

Ramsarni Kapoor (Mother)

Shashi Kapoor, born as Balbir Raj Prithviraj Kapoor on
18 March 1938, is an Indian film actor and film
producer. He has also been a film director and
assistant director in the Hindi film industry. [1]

Shashi Kapoor is a member of the Kapoor family, a

film dynasty in India's Bollywood cinema. He has
appeared in a large number of Hindi language films as
well as in a few English-language films. In 2011, he
was honoured with the Padma Bhushan by the
Government of India. [2] In 2015, he was awarded the
2014 Dadasaheb Phalke Award, making him the third
member of his family to receive the award after
Prithviraj Kapoor and Raj Kapoor. [3]
Kapoor was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) during
British Raj. He is the younger brother of Raj Kapoor
and Shammi Kapoor, the son of Prithviraj Kapoor, the
widower of Jennifer Kendal, and the father of Karan
Kapoor, Kunal Kapoor, and Sanjana Kapoor.[4] From
the age of four, Shashi Kapoor acted in plays directed
and produced by his father Prithviraj Kapoor, while
travelling with Prithvi Theatres. He started acting in
films as a child in the late 1940s, appearing in
commercial films including Sangram (1950), Dana
Paani (1953) under the name of Shashiraj as there
was another actor by the same name who used to act
in mythological films as child artiste. His best known

performances as child artist were in Aag (1948) and

Awaara (1951), where he played the younger version
of the characters played by his older brother Raj
Kapoor and in Sangram (1950), where he played
younger version of Ashok Kumar. He worked in four
Hindi films as a child artist from 1948 to 1954.

Early career (1960s)[edit]

Kapoor got an opportunity to work as an assistant
director in the film Post Box 999, the debut film of
Sunil Dutt, and worked as an assistant director to
Ravindra Dave in Guest House (1959) which was
followed by movies such as Dulha Dulhan, Shriman
Satyawadi, where Raj Kapoor was the lead hero.

Shashi Kapoor made his debut as a leading man in the

1961 film Dharmputra and went on to appear in 116
Hindi films, including 61 films as the solo lead hero
and 55 multi star-cast films, 21 films as supporting
actor and special appearance in 7 films. He was a very
popular actor in Bollywood during the 60s, 70s and
until the mid 80s. Kapoor's early films, Dharmputra,
Prem Patra, and Char Diwari, were in Hindi. He
started acting in English language films in 1963, in
films including The Householder and ShakespeareWallah. He was one of India's first actors to go
international.[5] Actress Nanda, who was an
established star at this time,[citation needed] signed
8 Hindi films with Kapoor, as she believed that he
could deliver good performances.[citation needed]
Their first two films as a pair were the critically
acclaimed romantic film Char Diwari (1961) and

Mehndi Lagi Mere Haath (1962).[6] In the 1960s

Kapoor acted in several romantic films opposite
Nanda, including Mohabbat Isko Kahete Hain (1965),
Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965), Neend Hamari Khwab
Tumhare (1966), Raja Saab (1969) and Rootha Na
Karo (1970).[7] In an interview in the 1990s, Kapoor
declared that Nanda was his favourite heroine and
that he regarded her as one of his mentors.[8] In
another interview, Nanda stated that Shashi Kapoor
was her favourite hero.[citation needed]

1970s and 1980s[edit]

Shashi Kapoor formed on screen pairs with Raakhee,
Sharmila Tagore, Zeenat Aman from the late sixties to
the mid eighties. He also acted opposite actresses
Hema Malini, Parveen Babi, and Moushumi Chatterjee
in many films. After their first movie together
Sharmelee, became a blockbuster, Raakhee was
frequently paired with him, and they acted in films
such as Jaanwar Aur Insaan(1972), Kabhi Kabhie
(1976), Baseraa (1981), Pighalta Aasman (1985), the
critically acclaimed Trishna (1978), Doosara Aadmi
(1977), Bandhan Kuchchey Daghon Ka, Bandh Honth
(1984), and Zameen Aasman.[9] He starred with
Sharmila Tagore in Waqt (1965), Aamne Samne
(1967), Suhana Safar (1970), Patanga (1971), Aa Gale
Lag Jaa (1973), Vachan (1974), [10] Paap Aur Punya
(1974), Swati (1986), the critically acclaimed New
Delhi Times (1985), which fetched Kapoor a National
Film Award for Best Actor in 1986,[11] My Love
(1970), Anari (1975), Gehri Chot (1983), Maa Beti
(1986) and Ghar Bazar (1998). With Zeenat Aman, he
worked in films like Chori Mera Kaam (1975),

Deewaangee (1976), Roti Kapda Aur Makan, Heeralal

Pannalal (1978), Pakhandi (1984), Bhavani Junction
(1985), Satyam Shivam Sundaram, Krodhi (1981),
Vakil Babu (1982), and Bandhan Kuchchey Dhaagon
Ka (1983). He did 10 films opposite Hema Malini.

Kapoor's other movies include Haseena Maan Jayegi

(1968) and Ek Shriman Ek Shrimati (1969) both with
Babita, Kanyadan, Pyar Ka Mausam (1969) both
opposite Asha Parekh, Chor Machaye Shor opposite
Mumtaz, Abhinetri (1970), Aap Beati (1976), Maan
Gaye Ustaad (1981), with Hema Malini, Bezubaan with
Reena Roy, Chakkar Pe Chakkar (1976), Kali Ghata,
Kalyug (1981), Vijeta (1982), Pyaar Ki Jeet(1987) all
with Rekha and Bepanaah (1985) with Rati Agnihotri.
Other films include multi-starrers like Dil Ne Pukara
(1967), Trishul (1978), Neeyat (1980), Aandhi Toofan
(1985), Naina (1973), Phaansi (1978),
Salaakhen(1975), Fakira (1976), and Junoon (1978).
[12] He also worked with Rajesh Khanna in Prem
Kahani.

From the 1970s to early 1980s, Kapoor starred

alongside Pran in 9 films which include Biradari, Chori
Mera Kaam, Phaansi, Shankar Dada, Chakkar Pe
Chakkar, Rahu Ketu and Maan Gaye Ustaad.[13] He
made a popular pairing with Amitabh Bachchan and
the two co-starred in a total of 12 films: Roti Kapda
Aur Makaan (1974), Deewaar (1975), Kabhi Kabhie
(1976), Immaan Dharam (1977), Trishul (1978), Kaala
Patthar (1979), Suhaag (1979), Do Aur Do Paanch
(1980), Shaan (1980), Silsila (1981), Namak Halaal

(1982), and Akayla (1991).[14] Shashi Kapoor was

regularly cast with Sanjeev Kumar also in films like
Mukti (1977), Trishul, Muqaddar (1978),
Swayamvar(1980), Sawaal (1982), and Pakhandi
(1984).

He was also known internationally for starring in

many British and American films, notably Merchant
Ivory productions run by Ismail Merchant and James
Ivory, such as The Householder (1963), Shakespeare
Wallah (1965) (opposite his sister-in-law Felicity
Kendal), Bombay Talkie (1970) and Heat and Dust
(1982) in which he co-starred with his wife Jennifer
Kendal, The Deceivers (1988) and Side Streets (1998).
He also starred in other British and American films
such as Pretty Polly (also called "A Matter Of
Innocence" (1967)) opposite Hayley Mills, Siddhartha
(1972), Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987), and
Muhafiz (1994). James Ivory directed Kapoor in the
first Merchant Ivory production The Householder, then
in Shakespeare-Wallah, Bombay Talkie and Heat and
Dust while Ismail Merchant directed him in Muhafiz
(1994).[15] He was the first Indian actor to work
extensively in Hollywood films and British films.
[citation needed]

In 1978, he set up his production house, Film Valas,

which produced critically acclaimed films such as
Junoon (1978), Kalyug (1981), 36 Chowringhee Lane
(1981), Vijeta (1982) and Utsav (1984).[16] In 1991 he
produced and directed a fantasy film titled Ajooba
which had his frequent co-star Amitabh Bachchan and

nephew Rishi Kapoor in the lead.[17][18]

He regarded Nanda, Pran, Dharmendra, Dev Anand,

Ismail Merchant, Rajesh Khanna, Sanjeev Kumar as
his closest friends from the industry since the
beginning of his career and maintained cordial
relations with Amitabh Bachchan, Yash Chopra, MGR,
Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar
and most of his co-stars.

Later career (19871999)[edit]

He accepted very few roles as a character actor in
films since 1987. He acted with Pierce Brosnan in The
Deceivers (1988).[19] He also won a National (special
jury) Award for his performance in Muhafiz (In
Custody) (1994), and played the Rajah in the TV
adaptation of Gulliver's Travels (1996). His last and
most recent film appearances were in Jinnah (1998), a
biographical film of Mohammed Ali Jinnah in which he
was the narrator and another Merchant Ivory
production titled Side Streets (1998). He retired from
the film industry by late 1990s and had not appeared
in any film ever since. He was seen in the limelight at
the Shashi Kapoor Film Festival held in Muscat, Oman
(September 2007). At the 55th Annual Filmfare
Awards, Shashi Kapoor received the Filmfare Lifetime
Achievement Award.[1]

Personal life[edit]
Kapoor attended Don Bosco High School in Matunga,

Mumbai. He met English actress Jennifer Kendal in

Calcutta in 1956 while both were working for their
respective theatre groups. Kapoor was both assistant
stage manager as well as an actor for his fathers
theatre group, Prithvi. Geoffrey Kendals
Shakespearean group was also present at the same
time in Calcutta and Jennifer was Geoffreys daughter.
After their subsequent meeting, the couple fell in love
and after facing initial opposition from the Kendals
and support from sister-in-law Geeta Bali, they got
married in July 1958.[20] They acted in a number of
films together, most notably in Merchant Ivory
productions. They had three children: Kunal Kapoor,
Karan Kapoor and Sanjana Kapoor. Jennifer and
Shashi established Prithvi theatre on 5 November
1978 in Mumbai.[21] Jennifer died of cancer in 1984
which shattered him. The English actress Felicity
Kendal is his sister-in-law.

Shashi Kapoors children, for a short while, became

Hindi film actors but their European looks and
accented Hindi prevented them from having a
successful career. His elder son Kunal is married to
director Ramesh Sippy's daughter and Sanjana is
married to wildlife conservationist Valmik Thapar.[22]
Kunal moved on to ad film direction and established
his production house Adfilm-Valas which is today
extremely successful.[23] Karan became successful in
modelling and later settled down in London. He is an
accomplished photographer.[24]

Health[edit]

On 20 July 2012, Shashi Kapoor underwent a cataract

surgery at Kokilaben Hospital in suburban Andheri.
He was discharged from the hospital the same day.
[25]

Awards[edit]
23 March 2015 - Dada Saheb Falke

Civilian Award[edit]
2011 Padma Bhushan by the Government of India[2]
2014 Dadasaheb Phalke Award[26]
1994 National Film Award Special Jury Award /
Special Mention (Feature Film) for Muhafiz (1993)
1986 National Film Award for Best Actor for New
Delhi Times
1979 National Film Award for Best Feature Film in
Hindi (as Producer) for Junoon
2010 Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award
Filmfare Best Movie Award Won
1982 Kalyug
1980 Junoon
Filmfare Best Supporting Actor Award Won
1976 Deewar Ravi Verma