1. – Sunil Shetty, Main Hoon Na, India, 2004. For her second Bollywood film as a director, choreographer Farah Kahn had difficulty finding her deranged Raghaven. Naseeruddin Shah was away shooting with Sean Connery, no less. Farah admitted being too scared to ask Nana Pateka – and Kamal refused because the role was “unpatriotic.”
2. – Rajnkanth, Endhiran/The Robot/Robo, India, 2010. Dream project of director S Shankar since 2001 when Hassan was set for the double role of scientist Dr Vasigaran and his creation, the robot, Chitthi… falling in love with co-star Aishwarya Rai. Next: Aamir Khan, Shahrukh Khan, Ajith Kumar came – and went. Finally, Shankar made it as not just Tollywood’s but India’s priciest movie, $35m (double Bollywood’s Blue budget), with costumes, stunts, SFX by the Batman, Matrix, Jurassic Park teams, locations in Austyria, Brazil, Peru, USA! Anmd starring, at age 60, the bus conductor turned moustachioed megastar of 150 action movies. Rajnkanth is quiteliterally worshipped by fans of the Kannada, Malayalam, Ytamil, Telugu, language movies of South Indian cinema – India’s largest.
Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls: 2