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Before he became known as India’s homegrown superhero Shaktimaan, Mukesh Khanna was called a copycat. At least that’s what happened in the initial phase of his film career, when immediate parallels were drawn between him and megastar Amitabh Bachchan.
In an interview with Bollywood Thikana, Mukesh Khanna recalled how people started calling him Amitabh Bachchan’s “copy,” which would irk him a lot. The actor said the copy tag was given to him right from his 1981 debut Roohi to subsequent films like Dard-e-Dil and Captain Barry.
“Media once called Mithun Chakraborty, ‘Gareebo ka Amitabh Bachchan.’ I don’t know how he reacted but if I was told that, I would’ve said, ‘Shut up.’ They would say, ‘You look like Amit ji, you copy him.’ A string of my films flopped which is why people said that. Here, only success speaks the loudest. When Mahabharat happened, no one gave me a label of Amitabh Bachchan, which happened a lot during my film career,” he added.
Mukesh Khanna recalled media articles which would claim that his career dipped because of “similarities” with Bachchan. The actor said when it came to him, that became a general chatter.
“People would say, ‘You weren’t successful because you look like him and now that Amitabh Bachchan himself said that you copy him, your career is over.’”
When asked if Bachchan did that Mukesh Khanna would copy him, the actor replied in affirmative and narrated the story of how he learnt about the megastar’s comments. “He did say that, but will I be a flop because of that? Amit ji kaun hai jo mere career ko rok sakte hai? (Amit ji can’t stop my career). A friend of mine had told me how he was watching a film with Amit ji. It was a drive-in theatre, and he was on the bonnet. When my ad came, he saw it and said, ‘Saala copy karta hai.’ Years late, some YouTubers took the quote and wrote, ‘Amit ji’s one line destroyed my career.’
“Every actor is inspired by some other– Manoj Kumar, Rajendra Kumar were inspired by Dilip Kumar, Shah Rukh is heavily inspired by Dilip saab too. Even the initial roles of Amitabh Bachchan were inspired and why not, because you take in from what you see. There is nothing in that But if you do mimicry in your films, then you will be destroyed. Which is what I didn’t do,” he added.
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