Amitabh's mother Teji Bachan was a very close friend of Indira Gandhi. It was armed with a letter from Indira Gandhi that Amitabh arrived in Bollywood and bagged his first role in Saat Hindustani.

WEll we will be seeing Salman Khan in a new film with sushmita sen and diya mirza called "tumko na bhool payenge". Promos on tv right now and surprise of the film salman baring his torso yet again !

Uffff....... I just hope this movie fails miserably so we can be rid off Salman Khan for ever.

Come to think of it, it indeed is nepotism. Just go around searching for new and relatively new faces which are doing rounds in Bollywood, 70 % of them are directly related to yester year's great. Akshay and to some extent, Rahul Khanna are the ones we forgot to mention. Agreed that Akhay's role in DCH was laudable, but then again, he could have easily faced Vivek Mushran's fate if it not had been for his father.

Talk about Tushar, Jitendra's son, yikes. Thought Rahul Roy made was impressive (comparatively) to this monkey-midget in his debut film. Same goes for Abhishek Bachan.

Now Yukta Mookhey is gonna be on the screen too. Its grave as the thread starter mentioned the way these new comers use Bollywood as thier hunting grounds. Its even more ironic to see the directors are more than happy churning out flicks which dont derserve a first look, but they still manage it coz it has some debutant who is already a celebrity.

There was this movie called 'Tum Bin' which was realeased which I believe did quite well. And as far as my ken reaches, none of the actors or actresses in that movie had any bollywood connections before being casted.

There are always exceptions thou, Sunny Deol, Hrithik Roshan, Karishma (thou she followed the run down 10 movies theory before being tagged as a good actress).

There is so much more to come by virtue of nepotism..

Esha Deol, Riya Sen, Relaunch of Sanjay kapoor, Yukta Mookhey... Vivek Oberoi ?

This is a good topic.

Tell me what was the background for Nassrudin Shah, Om Puri and Shabana Azmi. I still think they were very good actors.

Om Puri is Amrish Puri's brother.
Shaban Azmi is Kaifi Azmi's daughter. He is a well known poet and lyrics writer, in case you did know who he is.
Naseeruddin Shah, he I think is a product of the Film Institute of India and migrated from Theater to films.

Even if these three did not have any film links they debuted in films during the 1970's, this thread is targeted at more recent times. Although this phenomenon of nepotism has been prevalnet in Bollywood since ages, it is only in the last two decades that it has become so predominent. Infact it is now almost impossible for new talent to break into bollywood unless there is some family ties within the industry. Also earlier it was only the talented (well mostly) siblings and offsprings that made it in the industry. But now you don't need any talent or looks for that matter as long as your pedigree is from within the industry.

PS: The three main actors in Tum Bin were all models before the film. Also, Tum Bin cannot really be termed as a Bollywood product. IT is a film that was produced by T Series with almost all the main artistes, writers and director from television. The film did not even get a decent release in India which is the reason it did less business than it deserved.



Edited By Sanjay on Jan. 09 2002 at 11:06

You see what I mean, Naseeruddin Shah doesn't have a strong link to Bollywood and he has incredible acting skills.

That was way back when he came into the movies. If we still had people enter Bollywood from credible realms like TV, theater, or lowbudget acting we would have better acting from the start (..or closer to the start than we're seeing).

Om Puri and Amrish Puri are NOT related.

I agree, Nasseruddin Shah is a world class-actor.

Aamir is one of the best in Bollywood, SRK is just about okay, but has lots of charisma.

Madhavan is good as well.

yeah as far as i knew om puri and amrish puri are not brothers. Infact amrish puri and madan puri(who has passed away) were brothers....