Veteran actor Jeetendra is celebrating his 82nd birthday today. He never planned to become an actor but later emerged as one of the biggest stars of Indian cinema. For the unversed, the actor started his professional journey as a jeweler which was his family business, and happened to deliver some jewels to filmmaker V. Shantaram once. Noticing a spark in him, Shantaram changed his birth name (Ravi Kapoor) and that’s how Jeetendra was born in the Indian film industry.
Jeetendra made his debut in cinema with 1964’s Geet Gaya Patharon Ne and since then there has been no looking back for him. In his prime days, the 82-year-old used to see 8-10 releases every year. Interestingly most of his movies starred Jaya Prada and Sridevi and that’s why he called these actresses his ‘bread and butter’.
Why did Jeetendra used to call Jaya Prada and Sridevi his ‘bread and butter’?
In an old appearance on K Raghavendra Rao’s talk show Soundarya Lahiri, Jeetendra had recalled the time when his long-reaped movie Deedar-E-Yaar tanked at the box office making him lose everything. In the same interview, he further revealed, “With the release of Himmatwala, I bounced back. I made so much money. I forget my loss. And life went on. Two things – Raghavendra Rao and Telugu brought me back to life. Himmatwala was a roaring success.”
Presented by the actor himself under the direction of Harnam Singh Rawail, Deedar-E-Yaar also starred Rishi Kapoor, Rekha, and Tina Munim and took five years to complete. But when it was released in 1982, the film flopped so badly that Jeetendra had to suffer a loss of approximately Rs. 2.5 crores in those times. But when his Himmatwala featuring Sridevi was released, all his sorrows disappeared.
When Jeetendra was at his lowest, filmmaker Raghavendra Rao was the one who offered him Himmatwala. Recalling the same, Jeetendra was quoted on the show, “I was so happy when he (Raghavendra Rao) said Sridevi was going to star next to me. I used to call Sridevi and Jaya Prada my bread and butter.”
When Jeetendra said he owes everything to the Telugu film industry
Jeetendra also called Telugu a very beautiful language and it was because filmmaker LV Prasad gave the actor his first big hit. He shared, “If I called anybody my father after my own, it is LV Prasad. And I received a lot of love from Telugu people and they helped me in my worst crisis.”
Soon after 1983, Jeetendra and Sridevi’s Jodi was declared a hit and they were asked to star in every other movie. As a record, the duo featured in a total of 16 films out of which 13 were superhits.
Did you know despite Himmatwala being a blockbuster, Sridevi called it her ‘bad luck’?
After the movie’s song Naino mein sapna was declared a hit, the actress got the tag of ‘Thunder Things’ and was only offered glamorous roles in showbiz. As per PTI, a book named Sridevi: Queen of Hearts extracted an excerpt from one of her interviews. In it, she had said, “In Tamil films, they love to see me act naturally. But in Hindi films they want a lot of glamour, richness and masala. My bad luck was that my first big hit in Hindi films turned out to be a commercial one (Himmatwala).”
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