When Waheeda Rehman took up Dev Anand-starrer Guide, it was a role of a woman who leaves her husband and pursues her passion as a dancer, which wasn’t how traditional heroines were seen back in the day. So Waheeda’s choice to perform that role was met with a lot of resistance from other filmmakers. In a recent interview, the veteran actor recalled how Neel Kamal director Ram Maheshwari was quite upset when she took up Guide as both these films were being shot around the same time.
She shared that the director told her that she was “destroying” him by playing a part of a woman who leaves her husband. “I was shooting for both Guide and Neel Kamal around the same time. When the director got to know that I was doing Guide, he said ‘Waheeda ji you are killing me, you have destroyed me’. I said ‘I don’t get it’. He said ‘in my film, you are called Sita, who is fully in love with her husband and in Guide you are playing Rosy, who is dancer who leaves her husband. So I am destroyed’,” she recalled in a conversation with Doordarshan.
In fact, the director even told her that if she wanted to play such roles, she should not work in the Hindi film industry but leave for Hollywood. “He said ‘you should not do these kind of films because these films don’t work in India. This works in Hollywood. If you are fond of these kind of movies, then go work in Hollywood’,” she shared.
Because there was so much resistance on his part, Waheeda gave him the option of firing her because she was not interested in leaving Guide. “I said I will work in both movies. If you don’t like it, then fire me. I am not going to leave Guide. He was very upset,” she said.
She then shared the director’s comments on her work after Guide released and said that he saw Rosy as the vamp of that story. “When Guide released, he sent me a telegram. He wrote ‘excellent performance but for a vamp’s role’. I laughed a lot. Even though he was an educated man, his thinking was small,” she shared.
Guide starred Dev Anand and Waheeda Rehman in lead roles and is still known as one of Vijay Anand’s best films.
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Waheeda Rehman was told she was ‘destroying’ other directors by doing Guide: ‘I said if you don’t like it, then fire me’ – The Indian Express
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