Dilip Kumar, who passed away on Wednesday in Mumbai at the age of 98, was always the benchmark. He had a direct impact on many actors who worked in his time, from the forties to the nineties.
Few actors in Bollywood have had as many clones as Dilip Kumar. The assertion would seem like the greatest note of flattery in a film industry that survives and thrives on being 'inspired', more than superlatives such as star, superstar, megastar, thespian -- even legend, for the word, is often loosely used in Bollywood.
Dilip Kumar, who passed away on Wednesday in Mumbai at the age of 98, was always the benchmark. He had a direct impact on many actors who worked in his time, from the forties to the nineties. He continues to indirectly impact actors post-nineties too, for those who fashioned their acting after he continues to influence many rank newcomers of today.
Perhaps that is the mark of a legend -- when the trademark style of your art continues to outlive you and find new ways to reinvent itself through budding talents who started out long after you quit.
For the record, Dilip Kumar quit acting in 1998. That was the year Yusuf Saab -- as he was widely known to friends and fans alike -- last faced the camera for Umesh Mehra's "Qila". If the actor was never seen on-screen over the past two decades since its release, the rest of the film's primary cast including Rekha, Mukul Dev, and Mamta Kulkarni has also all but vanished, and director Mehra stopped making films nearly two decades ago. "Qila", an otherwise forgotten attempt, will continue to garner recall value because it was the last film of one of Bollywood's greatest.
Flawed and over the top as the film was, "Qila" gave Dilip Kumar a dual role as protagonist and antagonist (or 'hero' and 'villain' as masala filmdom loves classifying). Somewhere in those portrayals lay the key to why he was hailed as the phenomenon back in the day, when they showered him with epithets as Tragedy King, and the Great Method Actor of Bollywood.
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