Aruna Irani & Shabana Azmi Movies Together List — 5 Films

The shape of the work

The 1980s account for 80% of everything they made together. The 1980s belonged to Hum Paanch; the 1990s to Saaz. Aruna Irani acted in every film; Shabana Azmi acted in all of them. Strictly Hindi cinema — they never crossed industries together.

Partnership facts

• Shabana Azmi was already a National Award-winning actress when she signed Shama (1981), but she agreed to do the film because Aruna Irani — then a top character actor — was playing her mother. Shabana later said she wanted to see how Aruna would handle the age jump.
• In Anokha Bandhan (1982), Aruna Irani played Shabana's mother despite being only 7 years older in real life. Shabana deliberately underplayed her scenes to let Aruna's more theatrical style pop — a rare example of a younger star adjusting her craft to make a co-star look better.
• Aruna Irani and Shabana Azmi never became close friends. On the sets of Shama and Anokha Bandhan, they kept to themselves. Shabana once joked that Aruna was 'too busy being a star' to hang out with her between shots.
• Shabana Azmi said about Aruna Irani in a 1999 interview: 'She could cry on cue and make you believe it. I learned more about timing from watching her than from any acting class.'
• Their third and final film together, Saaz (1998), was a box-office disaster. But it directly led to Shabana Azmi recommending Aruna Irani for a role in the TV series Dekh Bhai Dekh — which became Aruna's biggest career hit in the 1990s.