Imagine you are an actor making your debut with one of Satyajit Ray’s most seminal works. Over the next few years, you are constantly working with the likes of Satyajit Ray and Tapan Sinha in Bengali. Then, five years later, you find yourself dancing in the valleys of Kashmir along with the maverick Shammi Kapoor. That was the situation Sharmila Tagore faced when she made her Hindi cinema debut with Shakti Samanta’s Kashmir Ki Kali in 1964.
At the fourth edition of SCREEN LIVE, Sharmila was shown a few memorable pictures from her stellar career. The first of those photos were from the filming of Kashmir Ki Kali and featured Sharmila and Shammi. “It was shot in Shopian,” pointed out Sharmila adding that it was far from easy to keep up with the energy of her flamboyant co-star. “The film had terrific songs. I was quite nervous about dancing, and Shammi ji was 200 times better than I was. I was just trying to keep up with him.”
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Sharmila shared that this wasn’t just due to his energy on sets, but also his unpredictability. “He would do something in the rehearsal, and do something else in the take. For a newcomer, it was slightly difficult. But it was fun. He was a brand of his own,” said the Gulmohar actor, adding, “In 1964, he was doing things like randomly breaking into dancing, and showcasing spontaneous madness, and that is what actors like Shah Rukh Khan did much later.”
Interestingly, Sharmila Tagore also referred to a viral AI-generated video featuring the likes of Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt in the place of Shammi and Sharmila. “While there is no doubt that today’s actors are so versatile and can do a variety of roles, including emotionally invested ones, Shammi ji was unique. I saw that Alia and Ranbir video, and he was nowhere near Shammi,” said the veteran actor.
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