Rajesh Khanna & Shabana Azmi Movies Together List — 6 Films

The shape of the work

Rajesh Khanna acted in every film; Shabana Azmi acted in all of them. Strictly Hindi cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Rajesh Khanna personally requested Shabana Azmi for Thodisi Bewafaii (1980). He had just seen her in a play and told the director, 'I want her opposite me.' She was hesitant because the role was a suffering wife — she thought it was regressive. Khanna convinced her by saying, 'Trust me, the audience will cry with you.'
• On the sets of Avtaar (1983), Shabana Azmi would deliberately break the rhythm of a scene to make Khanna react naturally. She knew he relied on rehearsed pauses and trademark gestures. So she'd throw in an unexpected line or a different pause — and Khanna, caught off guard, would give a more raw performance. Director Mohan Kumar loved it and kept the takes.
• Their film Avtaar (1983) directly inspired the plot of the 1994 Hollywood movie The Specialist. No joke — the film's writer, Alexandra Seros, admitted in an interview that she watched Avtaar at a film festival and lifted the core premise: a woman hires a hitman to kill her abusive husband, then falls for him. The Specialist starred Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone.
• During the shoot of Aaj Ka M.L.A. Ram Avtar (1984), Shabana Azmi would cook biryani at her home and bring it to the set for Khanna. He was going through a rough patch professionally and personally. She later said, 'He was lonely. I just wanted him to have a home-cooked meal.' They stayed friends until his death in 2012.
• Shabana Azmi once said about Khanna: 'He was the most generous co-star I ever had. He would give you the entire frame. He never once tried to upstage me. In Thodisi Bewafaii, he actually told the editor to keep my close-ups longer than his.' She said this in a 2013 interview with Filmfare.