Rekha & Rishi Kapoor Movies Together List — 5 Films

The shape of the work

The 1990s account for 60% of everything they made together. The 1980s belonged to Deedar-E-Yaar; the 2010s to Sadiyaan. Rekha acted in every film; Rishi Kapoor acted in all of them. Strictly Hindi cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Rekha and Rishi Kapoor first shared screen space in Deedar-E-Yaar (1982), but the film was a box-office dud. The pairing only got a second chance because producer-director K. Bapaiah cast them together again in Amiri Garibi (1990) — a move that surprised the industry, since their first film had flopped hard.
• In Sheshnaag (1990), Rishi played a snake god and Rekha played his human love interest. The film's special effects were so bad that both actors reportedly struggled to keep a straight face during the romantic scenes — Rishi later joked they were acting against each other's laughter, not each other's eyes.
• Despite making four films together, Rekha and Rishi Kapoor never developed a close off-screen bond. In his autobiography, Rishi wrote that Rekha was 'intimidatingly intense' on set, and they barely spoke beyond the required lines. Their last film together, Sadiyaan (2010), was shot in London — and they stayed in separate hotels.
• Rishi Kapoor once said about Rekha: 'She is a very private person. We never became friends. On the sets of Sadiyaan, we would say hello and goodbye. That was it.' He said this in a 2010 interview promoting the film.
• Sadiyaan (2010) was the only film where Rekha and Rishi played a married couple on screen — and it was also the last film of Rishi's father, legendary director Raj Kapoor's production house, RK Films. The movie's failure effectively ended the Kapoor family's decades-long run as producers.