When Rajesh Khanna said he ‘wouldn’t have stopped’ Dimple Kapadia from acting if he knew of her talent: ‘Wanted a mother for my children’

Rajesh and Dimple separated in 1982, and she returned to the movies in 1985, with Ramesh Sippy’s Sagar marking her return to Bollywood. At the time of the interview, their daughter Twinkle Khanna had still not made her way into the movies but Kaka said that if she wanted to act, he would be happy to produce a film for her. He shared that Twinkle had called him out on favouring her acting career, but putting a stop to her mother’s career.

He said, “Recently when I told one of my daughters Twinkle, that if she would like to act in a film, I would produce one for her. She said, ‘You will let me act but to mummy you say no.’ I said, ‘For the simple reason that I am your father and not your husband’.” He added that he “did not want to repeat the same mistake.”

The Bawarchi actor shared that if he had known about Dimple’s talent, he would have never stopped her from pursuing her career. “Besides, if I knew at that moment that Bobby would prove her talent, I wouldn’t have stopped her. To curb talent is cruel. By the time I saw Bobby our first daughter was already born,” he said. In 1990, Rajesh Khanna co-produced film Jai Shiv Shankar, directed by S.A. Chandrashekhar, starred him and Dimple alongside Jeetendra, Poonam Dhillon among others.