Anupam Kher looks up to Dilip Kumar as an inspiration. He considers the late legendary thespian as the reason why he became an actor in the first place. The two worked in four films together — Subhash Ghai’s Karma (1986) and Saudagar (1991), B Gopal’s Kanoon Apna Apna (1989), and J Hemambar and K Bapayya’s Izzatdaar (1990).
Kher recently recalled the first time he met Kumar on the sets of Karma in the early 1980s. “I was already dressed as Dr. Dang at 7 am. Dilip sahab came to the set at 11 am. He got down from his white Mercedes in a white shirt. I kept looking at him. I thought, ‘Wow, he’s the guy why I became an actor,’” the actor said.
Anupam Kher listed Bimal Roy’s 1958 horror romance Madhumati, Tapi Chanakya’s 1967 dramedy Ram Aur Shyam, A Bhimsingh’s 1970 action drama Gopi, and the 1955 romance Devdas as the films of Dilip Kumar that influenced him as an actor. “I almost had my noise broken while buying tickets for Gopi in black,” Kher recalled on India TV’s Aap Ki Adalat.
‘Anupam Kher Dilip Kumar se pyaar karta hai’
Anupam Kher and Dilip Kumar in the film Karma. (Express archive photo)
“I kept looking at him, how his hands looked like, how his face looked like. So Subhash Ghai took me to a corner and said, ‘Tu jis pyaar se inko dekh raha hai, tu mujhe marvaega! Tu meri film ka villain hai! (The love with which you’re looking at him, you’ll ruin the film! You’re the villain of my film!) Don’t look at him with so much love,’” recalled Kher.
However, Anupam Kher had a response ready. He claimed it was the actor who was in love with Dilip Kumar, not the character. “Anupam Kher Dilip Kumar se pyaar karta hai, Dr. Dang Vishwa Pratap se pyaar nahi karta (Anupam Kher loves Dilip Kumar, but Dr. Dang doesn’t love Vishwa Pratap),” Kher replied, responding to the characters played by him and Kumar respectively in Karma.
Kher also recollected shooting the iconic slap scene in the film Karma. “I committed a mistake. In order to impress him, I said, ‘Sir, slap me for real.’ He told me, ‘Beta, Pathaan ka haath hai, beshosh ho jaega (Son, it’s a Pathaan’s hand, you’d faint after the slap).’ But when he watched the scene, he told Subhash Ghai, ‘A dangerous actor has arrived. He’ll go a long way.’ I then thought now that Dilip Kumar has endorsed me, no power in the world can stop me,” said Kher.
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He also recalled a funny incident from the set when he was famished. Dilip Kumar wanted to tease him so he told Anupam Kher the story of the succulent apples his father used to sell. “He said, ‘It happens in Diminishing Marginal Utility that when you taste the second apple, then you don’t enjoy it as much.’ But I told him I’m enjoying it as much as I did the first one. Please stop this,” Kher recalled, laughing.
