When Manoj Bajpayee’s father auditioned at FTII in presence of Dharmendra, Manoj Kumar

PTI

New Delhi, April 23 

Manoj Bajpayee has often spoken about being rejected by National School of Drama (NSD) and now a new book reveals that his late father Radhakant Bajpayee was also a cinema lover who even auditioned for an acting course at Film and Television Institute of India in Pune.

Radhakant, as per journalist-author Piyush Pandey’s book “Manoj Bajpayee: The Definitive Biography”, was obsessed with films and may have inspired a love for cinema in his son, who went on to become one of the most successful actors in Hindi cinema.

“While cleaning our house during the Chhath festival, we found a prospectus of the Pune Film Institute in father’s belongings. Manoj also saw it. Then our father revealed how his college’s botany department had taken them on a trip to Pune.

“Because he had heard of the institute, he went to the campus. Auditions were taking place at that time. He too auditioned for an acting course. The interesting thing is the presence of Manoj Kumar and Dharmendra in the campus during the same time,” read the book, quoting Manoj’s elder sister Kamini Shukla.

Interestingly, that was not the only connection that Radhakant had with movies as he also worked as a part-time ‘Film Babu’ during his college days where he was “responsible for taking a film’s reel box to theatres from distributors”. 

“He would bring the reel box from Patna to Muzaffarpur,” said the book.

Radhakant, described by Manoj as “filmchi” (avid watcher), was a fan of actors like Dilip Kumar, Motilal and Dev Anand, and regretted till the end that his son could not share the screen space with any of these stars.

“I used to read Filmfare and watch many films. I liked Motilal and Dev Anand, apart from Dilip Kumar. Motilal and Dilip Kumar were actors, but Dev Anand was a hero. Come to think of it, my son (Manoj) also received more fame as an actor than a hero in his career,” Radhakant recalled in the book.

He died at the age of 83 in October, 2021. 

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