The Crafty Hairdressers of Bollywood

Blooming Bromance • The Terrifying Evil Twin

First Shahid Kapoor went bald for Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider, and now Ranveer Singh is expected to get his head tonsured for Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Bajirao Mastani. Neither Bhardwaj nor Bhansali are the sort of filmmakers to do something just because it’s ‘different’; both actors have said that going bald was key to the characters they play in their respective films, but you can’t help wondering if this was the one way both filmmakers ensured they had their leads exclusively to themselves.

Bhardwaj, you might remember, had famously sniped after Kaminey that Shahid had the bad habit of spending too much time fixing his hair. “He’d be a much better actor if he concentrated less on his hair and more on his performance,” the director has been quoted as having said at the time. When they signed up to work together again in Haider, the first thing the director made clear to his leading man was that some portions in the movie required that his locks go.

Ranveer recently posted a picture on Twitter saying his ‘mundan’ (hair tonsuring ceremony) was just around the corner. Bhansali, who got into a war of sorts with Karan Johar over casting Ranveer in Bajirao, reportedly wants to ensure that his star cannot shoot any other film or make public appearances while he’s on the filmmaker’s clock.

Blooming Bromance

Okay, so Arjun Rampal may no longer be part of Shah Rukh Khan’s inner circle, and his friendship with Hrithik Roshan is also clearly strained. But the actor still appears to be thick with his Raajneeti co-star Ranbir Kapoor, with whom he recently filmed scenes for their new movie Roy in Malaysia.

Unit members reveal that the two men hung out together when they weren’t shooting, and often caught dinner at local restaurants after pack- up. They were, reportedly, joined on two occasions by Jacqueline Fernandez, the film’s leading lady, who, it turns out, couldn’t match the drinking capacity of her two leading men.

Arjun Rampal and Ranbir Kapoor first hit it off while shooting Prakash Jha’s Raajneeti in Bhopal a few years ago, and their easy-going camaraderie became evident while they spent nearly a month after that travelling together to promote the film.

Ranbir, who neither belongs to Shah Rukh’s coterie of close friends, nor appears particularly close to Hrithik Roshan, is clearly unaffected by Arjun’s falling out with those superstars. To be fair, it’s not like the former supermodel himself is sulking over the fact that he’s not getting to hang out with SRK or Hrithik anymore. Arjun, his friends insist, clearly stands by his wife Mehr’s decision to stay in Sussanne Roshan’s corner after her split with Hrithik. And don’t even bring up those pesky rumours about his closeness to Sussanne… apparently that’s the one thing the famously chilled-out supermodel has no patience for.

The Terrifying Evil Twin

Filmmakers swear by her professionalism and the hard work she puts into her films, but when it comes to advertising shoots, it’s as if her evil twin shows up… This top actress has a reputation for being cranky and difficult when filming advertising campaigns for the many brands she endorses. There have been instances when she’s simply upped and left a shoot incomplete because she had somewhere urgent to go. Other times she has struck lines off the script, refusing to say what she’s not convinced about. In both cases, the agency and filmmakers involved have had to salvage what they could from the portions that she did complete.

Because clients tend to invariably hold the agency responsible for any snafus on set, the mood is usually tense when this particular actress is on the job. Before an ad shoot with Lil Ms Difficult recently, one agency representative who’d had a bad experience working with the actress on an earlier occasion dashed off an email to the client as a forewarning about the actress’ tantrums and her general bad behaviour. The client, in turn, reportedly forwarded that email to the actress’ manager and on the day of the shoot, only minutes after she’d checked into her make-up van, a printout of the email was produced, the author of the note was summoned and ordered thrown off the set if the director wanted the actress to film the campaign.

About The Author

Rajeev Masand

•