When Sharmila Tagore revealed Saif Ali Khan’s love for Shashi Kapoor: ‘He’d crawled onto set just to get his attention’

Actor Sharmila Tagore had once spoken about how late actor Shashi Kapoor had stopped her from quitting one of their films. In an old interview, Sharmila shared that she was about to have a meltdown when Shashi jolted her ‘back to reality’. Sharmila had also revealed how her son Saif Ali Khan insisted ‘on staying with Shashi’.

Sharmila Tagore and Shashi Kapoor had worked together in multiple films. Their films included Waqt (1965), Aamne Samne (1967), Suhana Safar (1970), Aa Gale Lag Jaa (1973), Paap Aur Punya (1974), Anari (1975), Door-Desh (1983), Swati and New Delhi Times (1986), Maa Beti (1987) among others.

In an interview with Open Magazine in 2017, Sharmila Tagore had said, “Despite being from the Kapoor family, he was insistent on creating an identity and a space of his own. He never once made me feel like he was part of a film legacy, and I wasn’t in that sense. There was a time during one of our shoots when I had taken Saif along on set. He was a little baby and he’d insist on staying with Shashiji. So much so that during one of the scenes he’d crawled onto the set just to get his attention. He has that love and respect for Shashiji to date.”

She added, “I remember once I was having a very bad day and was on the verge of quitting one of the films we were in together. I was in the dressing room, about to have a meltdown when Shashiji walked up to me and just jolted me back to reality. He said to me, “Don’t expect superior work out of all the filmmakers who cast you. There will be times when nothing that you read on the script will be part of the film. But the work needs to go on. You cannot be dejected because we don’t have time for it.” He was straightforward and never tried to appease me just for the heck of it.”

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Sharmila Tagore and Shashi Kapoor did Ghar Bazar in 1998, their last film together. Shashi died in December 2017 in Mumbai at the age of 79. He married Jennifer Kendal and had three children–daughter Sanjana Kapoor and his sons, Kunal Kapoor and Karan Kapoor.