Subhash K Jha

Mumbai:

A report in a leading trade magazine that Akshay Kumar is playing Bobby Deol’s father in a film has amused and exasperated the former. “It’s not just a question of age,” Akshay told when asked if he was playing Bobby’s father about Anil Sharma’s ‘Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyon’. “How can people write so irresponsibly? Am I so stupid as to play a colleague’s father? And even if I did something so silly, why would I deny it? The fact is I’m not — repeat not — playing Bobby’s father in ‘Ab Tumhare...’. In fact we aren’t even related in it! Bobby has a double role of father and son. So he plays his own father. Amitabh Bachchan plays his grandfather. I’m not a part of the family tree.” Incidentally, Akshay and Bachchan have been cast as son and father in several films, including ‘Waqt’.

For Bobby, Sharma is a family friend and has worked with father Dharmendra and brother Sunny. Akshay on the other hand is a newcomer in the Sharma fold. The actor’s well-wishers warned that Bobby would be given a better role. “But I never paid any attention to all these loose talk. My only problem was the anti-Pakistan dialogue. I told Sharma to clean the dialogues. That’s it. Once that happened, I’d no problems.”