Mithun Chakraborty won the National Award for the Best Actor in his first film Mrigayaa, which released in 1976. It was directed by the legendary filmmaker Mrinal Sen. Everybody knew his name but even then it was a daunting task for him to get established Hindi film producers to sign him for big-ticket commercial projects. He talked about his initial struggles in Bollywood at a TV show and revealed how Zeenat Aman, who was a superstar then, came to his rescue and paved Mithun’s way to his own stardom.
On the sets of a TV show, host Aditya Narayan asked Mithun, “We have heard no heroine wanted to work with you at one point, but then Zeenat Aman…”
Mithun replied, “No established heroines wanted to work with me then. The reason was my stature as a small star, they doubted if I would make it big, who will back him up? I don’t even want to recall what all was said about me, it pains me a lot. Some heroines even backed out after the films were announced. I think there were pressure of other heroes too, maybe they saw me as a competitor. If you work with him then we won’t work with you. At this juncture, Brij Sahab (Sadanah) went to Zeenat Aman and told her I am taking Mithun as the lead, would you work opposite him? She said ‘what a good-looking man he is’! I will do the film. Zeenat Aman jee broke that bar.”
It seems Mithun is talking about a film titled Taqdeer. The duo also worked in Ashanti but Taqdeer released first. Needless to say Mithun went on to become one of the biggest stars of the Hindi film industry.
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