Kabir Bedi recalls how Salman Khan's newfound stardom pushed him and Sunil Dutt into 'background music' in Kurbaan

Kabir Bedi has always been a huge fan of Sunil Dutt, like so many Indian cinema lovers. In his autobiography, Stories I Must Tell, he had mentioned about a fanboy moment when he had first met Sunil Dutt for the first time. He also shared screen with the actor in Kurbaan. However, he recalled how both he and Dutt were pushed to background music because Salman Khan, a newcomer then, and his sudden stardom.

Interacting with the media in a recent event, Kabir Bedi said, "I'd seen Dutt saab in ‘Mother India’ and I was like, ‘Oh my God, what an actor’. When I came to Bombay, I went to meet him and told him ‘Dutt saab, today my childhood dream has been fulfilled having met you’. And then a producer came to me and said, they’ve got a film called 'Kurbaan', where Dutt saab and I had to play two giants in a village and they were going to have a clash. And it would be a fantastic clash of titans.” It was he who had also recommended Salman Khan's name for the film. He added, “I'd heard Salim Khan's son Salman Khan had started acting and he was garnering quite the reputation. So that's how they signed Salman and he had just started his career.”

But by the time the film was made, Salman became a superstar. Kabir Bedi recalled, "Bollywood films in those days particularly were shot in a sort of installment plan. You know, they’d shoot a few days every month and it would keep going on. It used to take about two years to make a film and while the shooting for ‘Kurbaan’ was going on, four of Salman's films released and became superhits. Immediately, the scenes in our film were converted into a love story, and Dutt saab and I became the background music."

The film, that released in 1991 also marked Ayesha Jhukla's debut in Bollywood.