RISHI KAPOOR

‘Ranbir has often confessed being a little afraid of his father, and I am not surprised. Yes, Rishiji is different, he has that strictness. He is not an easy father. But that’s the kind of father Rishi himself had’
— Neetu Kapoor

istory has a strange way of repeating itself. Rishi Kapoor was first noticed as a gamine child actor in Raj Kapoor’s Mera Naam Joker, and did a much-talked about bum flash in that first appearance, in a bathing scene. Ranbir Kapoor, his son, did the same in his debut movie, But here’s the difference. Rishi Kapoor’s debut film may have tanked at the BO, as did his son’s debut – but it earned Rishi Kapoor a National Award for Best Child Artist in 1971. The film the actor often confessed, felt more like his commercial debut in cinema. Ranbir’s opposite Priyanka Chopra (who played the autistic Jhilmil opposite him), and a far more ruthless heartbreaker than his father ever played, in – the title and the song, a resonant revisitation of his father’s blockbuster hit from