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Emraan Hashmi’s performance in Awarapan did not really go in his favour after all. Now, uncle Mahesh Bhatt has restrained the actor from signing films outside the Bhatt camp.

Says Mahesh Bhatt, “Awarapan has helped Emraan get over his ’serial kisser’ image. It has helped him to establish his potential as an actor. I have asked him to take his career more seriously and stop being irresponsible with his work. It’ll help him in the long run.”

Mahesh uncle has also sketched a proper schedule for his nephew Emraan. Says Mahesh, “I don’t want Emraan to get stereotyped. I want him to do some meaningful roles. Not many would like to take the risk and flow against the tide. But I have assured him that our company is ready to take the risk.”

Although Mahesh has not received an answer from Emraan yet, he is convinced that Emraan will appreciate his decision. Mahesh says, “I have no idea what his decision will be. I wish well for him. But finally he knows what is best for him.”

Rekha: mother, so superior
Everyone admires Rekha’s saris. But, whenever anyone compliments her on a sari, she says, ‘My mother has given it to me’. To date, Re has rarely admitted to actually buying a sari. Also, she is known for keeping the transparencies of all her photographs after she shoots a portfolio. She only hands out a few negatives to the photographer and keeps the ‘bad ones’ safely in a cupboard. That must be quite a collection, considering that she is one of the most-photographed faces in the industry.

Preity Zinta: loo no further
Preity can share everything, but her loo. She outright refuses to let anyone use her washroom, irrespective of whether it’s in her house or her makeup van.

Vidya Balan: god’s gift to the industry?
A devoutly religious person, Vidya never starts anything without the Lord’s blessings. She is so particular about her prayers that she rushes back to her make-up van and prays before every shot. We wonder what she does when there are retakes?

Kunal Kapoor: one for luck
No matter how hungry he is, Kunal Kapoor doesn’t believe in eating all the food on his plate. He always leaves a few morsels. For luck? Close friends have tried reasoning with him, but in vain.

Sunny Deol: punjab’s hospitality
Sunny has a habit of calling filmmakers for story narrations at 5 am. Not just that, he insists on taking them for a jog and a game of table-tennis, after which he feeds them with parathas. Only when he is done with his exercise and breakfast, does he listen to the script.

Ameesha Patel: order, order!
A cleanliness freak, Ms Patel must have everything perfectly organised in her house. She prides herself on the fact that she can guide you even to a safety pin in her house. The neatness extends to everything at home, handbags included. She treats her bags every monsoon. The bags are then arranged in her wardrobe according to colour, night bags and day bags separately. Incidentally, Konkona Sen Sharma also shares this neatness fanaticism. Konkona once confessed that she cleans her vanity van every couple of hours.

Shah Rukh Khan: buy the way
There’s a churan vendor doing the rounds of Film City, who has a regular customer in SRK. The actor buys endless packets of chatpata powders and suparis from him. It’s besides the point that he never eats any of it. What he does instead is neatly stack them in his make-up van and offer them to those who visit him on the sets.

Kangna Ranaut: er… have we met before?
Kangna is known for her forgetfulness. Ms Ranaut can never remember faces or names she has met. No wonder industrywallahs fondly call her ‘Full Toss’.

Ashutosh Gowariker’s Jodha Akbar, which was slated for release around Diwali this year, may get delayed and in all likelihood release in the first week of January 2008. While Ashutosh Gowariker was not available for comment, UTV, the producers of the film, declined to comment on the release date. Said an industry source, “All decisions are made by Gowariker, besides, there are quite a few days left for the shooting of the film. A period drama like Jodha Akbar will take more than three months for the post production and processes like colour correction.”

The film, that is yet to complete its shooting, has been facing logistic problems too. From Hrithik’s accident to Aishwarya’s unforeseen marriage, the delay factors have marred the shooting of the film. Also, the fact that multiple releases are proving disastrous at the box-office this year would have prompted the producers to shift the film. Industry experts indicate that it’s been a year of surprise hits and none of the supposedly big films have actually made it good at the box-office. We’re not sure, but the presence of other big films in the same period, like Om Shanti Om, Saawariya and Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Pe, may have also have prompted the producers to shift the release to the next year.

Isn’t it amazing that in Bollywood, where most stars have screen names, several are still saddled with the pet names they picked up in childhood! For instance macho man Salman Khan is addressed by most everyone in the industry as Bhai, because his siblings and boyhood chums called him that. Salman is also known as Sallu. To continue, does Gullu suit Aishwarya Bachchan? Perhaps not, but it goes well with bad man Gulshan Grover! That other beauty, Sushmita Sen, must live down the ignominy of being called Titu!

If you need to ryhme, consider Guddu and Duggu… Rakesh Roshan and son Hrithik respectively. And don’t know what Bong bombshell Bipasha Basu’s parents were thinking of when they adoringly called her Bonny. Clinical analyst Dr Pratikshay Dhole explains, “A nickname symbolises a form of acceptance, but can often be a form of ridicule.”

Celina Jaitley is called as Chinki at home, and Mahima Chaudhary is known as Rits! Govinda, is known as Chi Chi, it is a name given by his mother Nirmala Devi. “In Punjabi, Chi Chi means little finger. Lord Krishna lifted an entire mountain on his little finger. Chi Chi’s a symbol of strength and unity,” says Govinda.

The Kapoor sisters Kareena and Karisma are Bebo and Lolo respectively. Karisma explains her pet name, “I got it from my dad because mom liked the Italian actor Gina Lollobrigidia.” Bebo’s boyfriend Shahid Kapoor, meanwhile, is Sasha. Aamir Khan’s friends call him AK and Shah Rukh Khan’s known as SRK. But Juhi Chawla calls him Lucky Ali, because she believes SRK’s a fluke!

Malaika Arora Khan is Malla and sister Amrita is Amu. Lanky Tabu is Tabassum, that’s her real name, and Tabu her pet name! Akshay Kumar’s real name is Rajiv Bhatia and he is called Raju by his friends. He adopted Akshay, aka Akki, as his screen name. Ajay Devgan was Vishal Devgan but friends call him VD. Boney Kapoor’s original name is Achal Kumar. Sunshine and Angel are Ameesha Patel’s pet names. “Both were given by an uncle who lives in Paris,” recalls Ameesha. While Suniel Shetty is Anna to everybody, Sanjay Dutt’s pet name given by his mother Nargis is Sanju, but the industry knows him as Baba. Abhishek Bachchan’s pet name is Abhi and dad Amitabh is called Amit. But the funniest name has to be Aftab Shivdasani’s. He’s called Faffy! And nobody can beat Priyanka Chopra whose pet name Piggy Chops was given to her by Abhishek Bachchan.

Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma takes time off from finishing his Sholay extravaganza and planning the start of shooting for Sarkar 2, to talk about his forthcoming films. Excerpts from an interview:

You’re getting together the Bachchans for the first time…
Yes, but I didn’t cast them as the first family. I signed Aishwarya long before she got involved with Abhishek. And they aren’t a couple in Sarkar 2. Abhishek is already married to Tanisha in Sarkar, remember?

But the audience will look at the couple in a different way…
I disagree. Once the audience enters a theatre, it creates its own ambience in the first 10 minutes. Unless a film is designed to accentuate personal equations between actors, audiences forget what relationships actors share in real life.

Does Big B play a semi-retired character?
Yes. Sarkar ended showing the senior Bachchan in retirement. But in Sarkar 2, Abhishek isn’t willing to take over the mantle. We pick up the story from there.

Are you doing Sarkar 2 only because everyone other filmmaker is into sequels?
It was Abhishek’s idea. We decided on Sarkar 2 even before the shooting for Sarkar was over. The characters seemed to tempt me enough to give them renewed life. We pick up the story from there. Abhishek’s character will be substantially more in the forefront. But like every son in a business empire, he’ll continue to look up to his father for support.

Jackie Chan has broken it all. No, not the box-office records, but virtually all the bones in his body while performing stunts for his movies. Our Bollywood stars are also not far behind. Hrithik Roshan did death-defying stunts for Krrish and Dhoom 2, Saif Ali Khan jumped from the 24th floor of a high-rise building, Shahid Kapur vroomed off the 16th floor of a building on his cycle in Fool N Final and Aishwarya Bachchan performed daredevil stunts in the action thriller Dhoom 2.

While these actors have performed these stunts on their own, LT talks to experts to find out whether self-performed stunts have a positive impact on the box office results.

According to trade analyst and film critic Taran Adarsh, actors nowadays are keen to accept challenges. “Today, actors wants to look more genuine and authentic. That is why they perform stunts on their own. M o re ove r, there is cutthroat competition in the industry and every actor wants to outdo his/her counterpart by taking that extra risk,” explains Taran. “These selfp e r fo r m e d stunts by actors don’t have much affect on the box-office results. For a film to do well at the box-office, the story should be good. Stunts performed by actors are a secondary thing for a film to become successful,” opines Taran.

Echoing Taran’s thoughts is Komal Nahata - another trade analyst and film critic . He says, “Stunts performed by actors on their own can certainly become a point of discussion but they can’t turn a flop film into a hit,” adding, “There are foreign technicians assisting actors while they are performing stunts. Also, more security measures are taken these days. So, stars don’t mind doing it. Besides, it adds authenticity to the scene.” Some of the blockbusters of the previous year like Dhoom 2 and Krrish had stunts performed by actors themselves. But
that doesn’t mean that these movies became hits just because of these stunts. There are a lot of movies that fared badly in spite of dangerous stunts by the lead actors.
As TV anchor-turned-film director Sajid Khan puts it,
“A stunt performed by an actor on his/her own can never become the USP of the film, no matter how dangerous the stunt is. A film does well only because of its story. A film is either good or bad, depending on the story and stunts don’t really play a major role in making it successful at the box-office.”

But noted action director Allan Amin thinks otherwise. He says, “A daredevil stunt performed by a top actor of the industry does have an impact at the box-office. The hero looks better when he does stunts on his own. It lends reality to the scene, making it look Hollywoodish, as most of Hollywood actors perform stunts themselves.”

Amin has 17-year-old movie buff Mohit Srivastava nodding his head. “If I get to know that my favourite actor has performed a stunt on his own in a movie, it excites me a lot and I make sure that I watch the movie as soon as possible,” states Mohit.

He’s thinking of an alternative profession. Apparently while shooting for Via Darjeeling, Parvin Dabbas was so enchanted by the breath-taking locations they were shooting in, that every time he got a chance, he would pull out his camera and freeze the image for eternity in his lenses. Co-stars Kay Kay Menon and Sonali Kulkarni were amused by his fascination. Well Parvin, what about shooting some of our Bollywood beauties, sure the thought of that will make you freeze!

We hear that director Rohit Shetty is all set to make a sequel of Golmaal. And this time it’s going to be shot completely in Dubai. The script also has been worked upon. Rohit tells us, “Golmaal II will have the same cast as its first part. But only this time round, we plan to add four more lead actresses.” And as to why he is making the sequel? “Everyone had a good time watching the movie, we had a good time making the film, and we have a chance to take the concept and story forward, so why not?” he asks.

If all goes well, Uday Chopra and Tanisha Mukherjee (Kajol’s sister) will tie the knot later this year. After having dated for two years, the couple are now ready for marriage. However, the respective families are yet to fix the wedding dates.

“Uday and Tanisha have just made up their mind about marriage. Their families have given an assent to the wedding. They will be meeting shortly to decide on the dates,” says a source close to Tanisha on condition of anonymity.

The couple may have shunned the shutterbugs all this while but close friends insist that they are keen on marriage. Talks of it started at Abhishek and Aishwarya’s wedding on April 20, when sister Kajol suggested marriage. Kajol had arrived at the Bachchan wedding with Tanisha and Uday.

Says our source, “Kajol and a few other friends had jokingly suggested marriage. This prompted them to think about it and now they are ready for it. An engagement ceremony is likely to precede the wedding.”

For this couple, love had blossomed on the sets of Arjun Sablok’s film Neal ‘N’ Nikki. They started off as ‘just friends’ and later they started dating each other. In fact, Tanisha was initially not comfortable kissing Uday for the film. Eventually though, she gave in.

Talking about their individual careers, both Uday and Tanisha are yet to make their presence felt in Bollywood. The buzz is that Kumar Mangat has roped Tanisha in for an untitled project along with Upen Patel. As for Uday, he is going through a few scripts.