This Monday, Aamir Khan turned 46 years old. Along with Shah Rukh, he has been at the top of the ladder in Bollywood for all of the last decade. Shah Rukh is also born in the year 1965, and by coincidence the third Khan in the triumvirate, Salman, too is from that year. All three will soon be pushing 50 but there is not one person in India who will say that their careers are anywhere near eclipse.
In 1986, when Amitabh Bachchan was 46 years old, he had a blockbuster in Aakhree Raasta. The previous year, he had one of his biggest hits of his career, Mard. It took 14 more years before the public got tired of him being young when he was clearly not, and he was forced to play his age in Mohabattein.
Now turn to another former star who's lately been met with a different reception. Last month, Madhuri Dikshit refused to play Sonam's mother in what would have been a remake of a Hollywood film called Freaky Friday. Madhuri Dikshit is actually 44 years old. She is two years younger than Aamir, Shah Rukh and Salman. The offer to her was made by Sonam's father Anil Kapoor who, when he was 46, was playing a happily married young man in No Entry. At that age, if someone had told him to play the father of an actor, his reaction wouldn't have been pleasant. It would still not be pleasant today when he's 52, given that even in recent movies you cannot spot a streak of grey in his hair.
Bollywood and the Indian public are very kind to ageing male actors and vicious to actresses. After about the age of 30, death throes start settling in. The coming Monday, 21 March, will see the 33rd birthday of Rani Mukherjee, and the writing is already on the wall. While the production company Yash Raj has been very kind to her by giving heroine-centric movies over the last couple of years, every one of them has bombed at the box office.
Since it's difficult to not be a star, actresses like Preity Zinta and Shilpa Shetty find toys like cricket teams to keep them in the limelight a little longer. The safe end for an actress is to marry a successful filmmaker, like Sridevi chose to do. Or a businessman, like Juhi Chawla did when she was 31 and then slowly slunk into character roles. Someone like Rekha who tries and fails to do that only ends up leading a lonely, forgotten life.
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