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He's been around for 22 years, has Jaikishan Shroff, known to the world as Jackie Shroff, to cronies and colleagues as Jaggu Dada, and to many others simply as a beloved, dependable bhidu.
So okay, he is no longer the quintessential romantic leading man, like colleagues Sunny Deol and Anil Kapoor who joined Bollywood the same year, or like Sanjay Dutt, two years his senior. But the sexy Shroff, as he is known, has earned goodwill in multiples of his colleagues and has a far more variegated body of work than them. He's not just been a hero but has played every role from a character artist to even a villain.
An A-list of directors, a spectrum of memorable movies of every kind and an ever-increasing list of buddies - Jackie, launched as a Hero by Subhash Ghai, is a survivor of even the Grahan's and Boom's of his career. Now more as an actor than a stud who drove female hearts aflutter, Jackie is all set to reach the Gardish in his profession.
Excerpts from an interview follow.
Q: Let's rewind - all the way to your formative years.
A: (Laughs) Is this gonna be a biography, bro? Well, I had an absolutely cool, easy childhood in the shadow of my mom and elder brother Hemant - we were both named by dad after his favorite music directors Jaikishan and Hemant Kumar!
I was so over-protected that I was not even sent to school till I was seven, because mom felt that I would fall sick and get dirty spending so many hours outside our home. My father fought with her and finally, she began carrying me to school in her arms.
Dad hailed from a prosperous trader family - we were Saraf, and Shroff is an anglicized name for Saraf, which means trader. Dad lost money on stocks and took responsibility and walked out. He shifted to Honeymoon Quarters, a chawl at Walkeshwar's Teen Batti Char Raasta area. Dad was brilliant in mathematics, which explained his speculations as a trader, his love for races, and later, his mastering of astrology, which became his profession.
His astrology was perfect because he was a super mathematician. Mrs. Dhirubhai Ambani told me how her husband...