Amol Palekar

Basu Chatterjee picked Amol Palekar from theater to Cinema Notable filmmaker Basu Chatterjee, who had given hit films Sara Akash (1969) and Piya Ka Ghar (1972) spotted Amol Palekar at a play and signed him for his triangle love story Rajnigandha (1974). The movie was a simple love story of a boy-next-door with a lady who has earlier bad experience in love. The film was super-hit and won Filmfare Best Critic Film Award. Amol Palekar won rave reviews as an out of the box actor. Amol Palekar hit a hat-trick of hit films and set a record After the mega success of Rajnigandha, Amol Palekar got stereotyped as a boy-next-door and hit a hat-trick with the consecutive hit films Chhoti Si Baat, Chitchor and Gharaonda. Incidentally all were released in 1976 and all were super hit. Besides commercial cinema, Amol Palekar was also applauded by parallel cinema. Shyam Benegal’s Bhumika, Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Khamosh, Gulzaar's Gharaonda Amol Palekar gave a tough time to Amitabh Bachchan With Zanjeer in 1973 Amitabh Bachchan literally swayed the 70’s as the angry man and gave action moves a major thrust. However when everybody was making action films, Amol Palekar was the only actor who swam in anti-direction. He declined action films and did only family based soft love stories and comedies like Damaad, Baton Baton Mein, Naram Garam, Shriman Shrimati, Rang Birangi, Apne Paraye and of course Gol Maal in which he brought the cinema house down with his witty double role! Besides Hindi Cinema, Amol Palekar acted in many regional films like Tuch Majhi Rani (Marathi) ; Olangal (Malayalam) , Chena Achena (Bengali), Sringara Masa (Kannada) Jeevana Jyoti (Telugu).