Akshay Kumar

Posted on by Tony CrawleyCategories:Actors
  1. Aamir Khan, Mann, 1998. Apparently not wishing to be compared with their betters, Kumar and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan turned  down The Couple – based upon  (take your pick) Charles Boyer-Irene Dunne inLove Affair, 1938; Cary Grant-Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember, 1956; Warren Beatty-Annette Bening in Love Affair,  1994. Nandita Das and Tabu also rejected the female lead)
  2. Rahul Roy, Tune Mera Dil Le Liyaa, India, 2000.      At last! All was set for the first romantic pairing of Kumar and Raveena Tandon. Then, quite suddenly, the guy was Roy.
  3. Arjun Rampal, Pyaar Ishq Aur Mohabbat, India, 2001.      Yes, fine, love to – but he was shooting Dhadkan. Impossible to cycle between the two as this one was shot in… Scotland.
  4. Vijay Anan, Mulaqaat, India, 2002.      The dream Hindi-Muslim couple of director K Ravi Shankar – Akshay Kumar and Aishwarya Rai – became Vijay and Shivani Rathod.
  5. Irfan Khan, Maqbool, India, 2003.      Bollywood director Vishal Bharadwaj first asked Kumar to play… Macbeth! Or, considering the setting of the 21st Century Mumbai underworld, Joe MacBeth, 1955.
  6. Bobby Deol. A Sublime Love Story: Barsaat, India, 2005.      When Kumar was not free to play Arav, Aishwarya Rai and Katrina Kaif were no longer interested in being Anna – particularly when America was played South Africa (and Mumbai studios. (One of Kumar’s 2004 contracts was because a director wanted all his stars’ names to begin with A… Amitabh Bachchan, Ajay Devgan, Aishwarya Rai, Atul Kulkarni, Amrish Puri, etc).
  7. Shah Rukh Khan, Don, India, 2006.      Passed. Kumar’s first 86 films (in 17 years) have included Bollywood re-treads of everything from Sabrina to The Silence of the Lambs.
  8. Anil Kapoor, Race, India, 2008.     Not into secondary roles. Not even when requested by the director brothers known collectively as Abbas-Mastan.
  10. Shah Rukh Khan, Billu, India, 2008. Irrfan Khan is the broke barber becoming famous when people think he’s a close buddy of the superstar Sahir Khan… When one big star, Kumar, decided Sahir wasn’t interesting enough, the bigger SRK relished the opportunity to send up himself and his Bollywood fame. (Irrfan Khan had parodied SRK – and Amitabh Bahcchan – in his 2007 comedy, Sunday).
  11. Abhishek Bachchan, Delhi-6, India, 2009. Director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra offered his his semi-auobiographical lead role to the A Team: Kumar, Imran Khan, Hrithik Roshan, Siddharth. Atnd then the biggest. Abhi.

 Birth year: Death year: Other name: Casting Calls:  10