Sunil Shetty & Gulshan Grover Movies Together List — 10 Films

The shape of the work

The 2000s account for 70% of everything they made together. The 1990s belonged to Dilwale; the 2000s to Hera Pheri. Sunil Shetty acted in every film; Gulshan Grover acted in all of them. Strictly Hindi cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• They first shared screen space in 'Dus' (1997) because the director, Anil Sharma, needed two actors who could convincingly play hardened criminals without looking like heroes. Sunil and Gulshan were both cast as the main villains — and neither had played a full negative lead in a big-budget film before.
• In 'Khanjar: The Knife' (2003), Gulshan played a psychotic killer and Sunil played the cop chasing him. Gulshan later said in an interview that Sunil's physical intensity forced him to dial up his own menace — because Sunil's stare was so cold, Gulshan had to make his voice scarier just to keep up.
• During the shoot of 'Aaghaaz' (2000), Sunil and Gulshan shared a vanity van for three weeks because the outdoor location had limited facilities. They spent nights playing chess and arguing about which 80s action hero was better — Amitabh or Dharmendra. Gulshan still calls Sunil 'the only man who beat me at chess on set.'
• Their pairing in 'Ek Se Badhkar Ek' (2004) was so effective as rival gangsters that the director, Kundan Shah, later admitted he cast them specifically because he wanted the audience to feel like they were watching a real-life gang war — and that film directly inspired the casting of two real-life rivals in a later TV crime series on Sony.
• Gulshan Grover once said about Sunil: 'He is the only co-star who never once complained about my bad breath during our fight scenes. That's true friendship.' — Gulshan Grover, in a 2005 interview with Filmfare.
• In 'Shaadi Se Pehle' (2006), a comedy, Sunil played a goofy sidekick and Gulshan played a flamboyant villain. The director revealed that Sunil kept cracking up during Gulshan's dialogue delivery, so Gulshan started deliberately making Sunil laugh to ruin takes — and the final film kept two of those accidental laughs because they felt real.