Veteran actor Shashi Kapoor's biography to be released this month

Chapters from the personal and professional life of the enigmatic Shashi Kapoor that hitherto remained disclosed is set to come to the fore as a biography on the versatile actor is set for a release this month. ‘Shashi Kapoor the Householder, the Star’, authored by film journalist Aseem Chhabra, attempts to delve into the nature and nurture of Kapoor, who proved his might as more than a natural star born into the first family of Hindi film industry as he became the commercially viable superstar and a critically acclaimed actor.

The Rupa Publications, offers glimpses of Kapoor, the family man son of Prithviraj Kapoor, husband of Jennifer Kendal, and father to Kunal, Karan and Sanjna, while it tracks the emergence of a bright-eyed boy who made his acting debut in brother Raj Kapoor’s directorial maiden ‘Awaara’ (1951) to one of the busiest performers in the 1970s.

Kapoor, who was in 2014 felicitated with the Dada Saheb Phalke Award, the highest honour in Indian Cinema, belted out films like ‘Waqt’, ‘Deewar’, ‘Trishul’ even as his forays into the non-commercial arena of filmmaking yielded nothing less than ‘Junoon’, ‘Kalyug’ and ‘Utsav’, all considered masterpieces.

Set for its official launch on May 6, the biography also traces the affable Bollywood star’s forays into world cinema as also his pioneering works in the theatre circuit.

Stakeholder to three National Film Awards, Kapoor outshone some of his contemporaries, including megastar Amitabh Bachchan and flamboyant Shatrughan Sinha, with his foreign ventures including the most famous ‘The Householder’ besides ‘Shakespeare Wallah’, ‘Heat and Dust’, ‘Bombay Talkie’, among other British and American productions.