The 80s was the decade of multi-starrers and double shifts. Zeenat Aman was a leading star running second to Hema Malini at the box-office. Zeenat called herself a professional and the heroes scoffed at her for not being emotional. Today, emotions have no place in show business and if you are not professional you have lost the race before you have begun.
All the leading ladies of that era longed to work with Gulzar but not the heroes, they felt he made heroine-oriented films. My interview with the writer was about his films and his poetry and Meghna Gulzar, a school going kid at that time, scribbled her first poem as part of my story on her writer father.
South superstars Sridevi and Jaya Prada were introduced in Hindi films but had to still adjust to the razzle dazzle of Bollywood. Jaya Prada described Mumbai as a city that never sleeps and Sridevi was confused why everyone addressed each other adding Ji.
It was the era of star sons, Dharmendra was launching Sunny Deol, Manoj Kumar was launching Kunal Goswami and Raj Kapoor was launching Rajiv Kapoor. That’s why Subhash Ghai decided to backup an outsider Jackie Shroff, only Anil Kapoor had no godfather and therefore worked harder than everyone put together.
The new heroines for the star sons were Poonam Dhillon, Meenakshi Sheshadri, Rati Agnihotri and Anita Raj.
Dev Anand was launching new faces and new films, Shabana Azmi the fiery actress of parallel cinema was showing the first sign of a blooming activist and Rekha, in a surprise move had stopped talking to the media.