Subhash Ghai recently spoke about working with Bollywood legends across generations. While he admitted to differences with Shah Rukh Khan during Pardes, he praised the actor’s craft and hailed Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan as great actors.

Subhash Ghai spoke about working with Shah Rukh Khan, Dilip Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan. (Pic: Express Archive)

Filmmaker Subhash Ghai, known for launching and working with Bollywood legends across generations, recently shared his candid views on actors. Ghai, who introduced Jackie Shroff in Hero, crafted unforgettable films like Karz with Rishi Kapoor, Saudagar with Dilip Kumar and Rajkumar, and Pardes with Shah Rukh Khan, described actors as “children” seeking constant reassurance. He also categorised them into five types: non-actors, bad actors, actors, good actors, and great actors.

Speaking to Arbaaz Khan in an interview, Ghai called Vivek Mushran a ‘non-actor’ as he had never seen cameras before he cast him in Saudagar (1991). He also recalled how Raaj Kumar found it difficult to work with an inexperienced Vivek. He said, “Raaj Kumar sahab faced a lot of problems working with him because he wouldn’t say a dialogue like a dialogue, he would just straight say it.”

The filmmaker then called Jackie Shroff a ‘bad actor’ and shared how he helped him polish his skills to become a good actor. Ghai’s 1983 Hero was Jackie Shroff’s debut lead role. “The bad actor was Jackie Shroff in the film Hero and it is because whatever you say to him, he would get worried after that,” Ghai said. When asked why he cast him in Hero, he responded, “He was fitting in my character. His face, the struggles that he has seen in his life and his honesty, I looked at these things and thought that he would learn the craft. When I saw that he was a bad actor, I taught him and slowly he learned the craft and became a good actor.”

Calling Anil Kapoor a complete director’s actor, he shared, “Actor is Anil Kapoor. Those who are ‘actors’ only listen to the director. If you want him to do a role like Lakhan, he will do it, if you want him to play the role of a lawyer, he will do it. He is purely a director’s actor. If he didn’t perform well that means the director made a mistake and not him.”

Explaining what a ‘good actor’ means to him and why Shah Rukh Khan fits into this category perfectly, Ghai said, “A good actor is a person who understands the scene and outperforms it, such that the director also feels that he took the scene beyond the written script.”

He explained, “I have worked with actors who weren’t stars at the time but they had their own qualities. For instance, I have worked with Shah Rukh in Pardes and sometimes I felt like he lifted scenes from what was written in the script. Though we had our differences and we would argue; but if he is really performing, he can take a scene and lift it.”

Subhash reserved the ‘great actor’ category for the legends and said, “Others are great actors and among them is Dilip Kumar sahab. He would perform a badly written scene in such a way that people would think that it is a great scene. They rise much above a scene. Amitabh Bachchan is like that and sometimes Rishi Kapoor would also perform that way. Their films can be bad but not their performances.”