When Rajiv Kapoor spoke about why his career never took off: They tried to project me like Shammi Kapoor

Rajiv Kapoor died earlier today at the age of 58. He was the youngest son of Raj Kapoor. Unfortunately, Rajiv’s acting career never came into the limelight like the other members of his talented illustrious Kapoor family. In a 2016 interview to a website the late actor, Rajiv Kapoor had spoken about why his career never took off. In the interview, he admitted that 1985’s Ram Teri Ganga Maili remains his most well-known work. He starred in a string of flops after that. The film was directed by his father Raj Kapoor which was his last directorial. The film also stars Mandakini.

Rajiv who has a remarkable resemblance with his late uncle actor Shammi Kapoor also faced the comparison. In the interview, Rajiv said that he was always compared to his uncle, Shammi Kapoor, because of their physical resemblance to each other.

He told Cinestaan, “As far as my career is concerned, Ram Teri Ganga Maili is the best film I did. The other films didn’t do well, but not all were bad. The sad part was that everybody wanted to project me like Shammi Kapoor because I looked like him.” He continued, “To summarise in simple language – hit is fit. If your movies did well things would be on a different tangent. I did some nice films which had good music, but not many did well.”

After Ram Teri Ganga Maili, Rajiv appeared in films such as Aasmaan (1984), Zabardast (1985), Lover Boy (1985) and Hum To Chale Pardes (1988), with his last film being Zimmedaar in 1990. Post that, he turned to direction and production. Rajiv has directed PremGranth in 1996 which also has late Rishi Kapoor and Madhuri Dixit Nene in it.
Last year in April, the Kapoor family had lost Rishi. He died on April 30 after a two-year battle against cancer. Rajiv’s sister, Ritu Nanda, died in January 2020.

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