Happy birthday Jeetendra: How the actor made his debut as Sandhya's body double in the film Navrang, read the interesting story!

Jitendra is celebrating his 81st birthday on Friday. Born as Ravi Kapoor in Amritsar on April 7, 1942, the actor worked in the Hindi film industry for over six decades and appeared in several critically and commercially acclaimed films such as Farz, Himmatwala, Parichay, Dharam Veer, and The Burning Train.

But did you know that Jeetendra made his debut in V. Shantaram's Navrang in which he played Sandhya's body double? By the way, there is an interesting story behind it too. The actor's father Amarnath Kapoor supplied artificial jewelry for films and the then-young Ravi often distributed them to film studios.

Ravi's father requested director V. Shantaram to allow his son to visit the sets of the latter's film after the young boy expressed his desire to watch a film shoot. But, the filmmaker was very particular about the visitors on his sets and thus, he suggested Ravi to become a junior artiste. 

Jeetendra, who was then in his teens, was selected to be a part of the song Tu Chuppi Hai Kahaan, Main Taapta Yahaan in Navrang.

Jeetendra explained the rest of the story in his old interview with Rediff.com. The actor said- "We were shooting in Bikaner. Mr. V Shantaram was very careful about the timing. I arrived late for dinner and he got very angry and asked the production team to send me back. He told my make-up man not to make me up for the next day's shoot."

The 81-year-old actor further added, "The next morning, I woke up at 5 am and requested my make-up man to make me up. I went to Mr. V Shantaram's room. From then on, I didn't leave any chance to please him. I used to chamchagiri (sycophancy) to him and do whatever he said, so I also became a body double for Sandhya.

Jeetendra made his debut in 1964 as a lead hero in the V. Shantaram-directed song Gaya Pattharon Ne. Before his debut film, Ravi Kapoor adopted Jeetendra as his screen name. Interestingly, Jeetendra's daughter Ekta Kapoor named her son Ravie Kapoor, whom she welcomed via surrogacy in 2019, after her father.